But first, if you wish to read up on what has transpired before, click on the links below:
Day 1: Here There Be Balboas!
Day 2: Honor Among Thieves. Sorta (But No, Not Really).
Day 3: Making the Best of Things.
Day 4: We Have Fun and Games.
Day 5: Making Friends and Fighting Dragons.
And now for the continuation ...
DAY 6: To the Bat Cave!
By now I had mastered all there was to master about jungle living.
Okay, let me cut the crap. I wasn't truly "roughing it" out here. Not really. Aside from the atrocious heat and humidity (high 90s for both) that made all my clothing remain forever damp no matter how long I left them out to "dry" ... the most disturbing thing I had to deal with were the monkeys in the trees watching me and occasionally jumping onto my cabin and, well, monkeying around. Hey, at least now I truly understood where that expression came from in the deepest, most profound way.
All that aside, I actually did have a great daily game plan going by now. Wake up around 6:15 in the morning; retrieve the enclosed tray of muffins and coffee left on the stoop outside my door; read a book on the making of the film The Princess Bride (one of my favorites!) as I ate this small *snack*; take a much needed and refreshing cold shower in the outdoor stall attached to my room; pack up my day bag for whatever adventure awaited me; apply SPF 50 sunscreen (I wasn't all that far from the equator, after all); lather on the max strength bug juice; and then finally, around 8am, make way down the many flights of steps to the main cabin for breakfast with the other guests. It was a nice routine.
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| Where everyone gathers to eat and hang out -- sometimes literally! |
And this day was going to have something special in store for those of us willing to take on the challenge. We were going to boat and hike our way deep into the Panamanian rainforest to reach the Nivida bat cave for some underground climbing and exploration. Ho-lee shit!
So those of us going -- which was just myself and a nice family from Prescott -- piled into the boat, and off we went again. We left La Loma behind for the day, but provisioned with the same packed lunch of gourmet goodness as per usual. I was getting too used to this kind of pampering!
Our guide -- a local tribesman named Roberto -- piloted the boat over remarkably calm waters this morning, steering us along the coast of Isla Bastimentos until we eventually reached an inlet emerging from the jumble of roots that made up a mangrove swamp on the edge of the ecological reserve we were now in. Roberto cut the engines as we entered the jungle and brought out paddles for us to use the rest of the way upriver. I felt as if I was entering Jurassic Park!
At some point through this verdant jungle, a dog appeared from out of the mangroves and watched us, his tail wagging. As we continued, he would disappear back into the undergrowth and reemerge a minute later way ahead of us, where he would wait on the banks with tail wagging once more in order for us to catch up.
He never barked, and in fact all this took place in complete silence. "That's Pinto," Roberto supplied. The three teens on the boat oohed and ahhed and waved at Pinto the wonder dog, who soaked it all up like a good doggie, but didn't seem to let it get to his head. He had a mission to guide us to safety and then to his home, and he was serious about bringing us in! As our guide explained it, the dog belonged to a tribe of indigenous people he knew who had a camp set up near the source of the river. We still had about a kilometer left to go, and so those of us paddling renewed our efforts to keep up with Pinto and not let him down!
Along the way we saw some more monkeys of the howler variety, and also quite a few sloths of the three-toed pedigree -- including this juvenile apparently taking a nap far above our heads while adeptly gripping the tree limbs around her. How do they do that?! I was impressed.
Roberto explained that caimans also lived in these waters. He hastily added that we need not worry, however, as the crocs mostly came out at night.
Mostly. *gulp*
Well, that's a relief!
At long last we arrived at a point where the river narrowed too much for us to continue. We had arrived at our destination; or at least, the place where we would now commence the overland portion of our quest.
We disembarked at a crude dock, then followed Pinto and a couple of kids in shorts and t-shirts -- but no shoes! -- through a muddy, winding trail that eventually lead to a huge grassy clearing in the middle of the jungle. Here we found two large houses made of timber and the odd scrap of tin paneling. One of them, the largest, was clearly some kind of welcome center for visitors. It had a small kitchen and buffet style long tables, although we were the only non-natives there that morning. The other structure seemed to house the entire extended family of this indigenous group we were visiting, to which Pinto and the children we had encountered belonged.
We met the person who would be our guide to the bat cave (heh, heh -- Robin, TO THE BAT CAVE!!) , and he seemed amiable enough. He smiled and talked to us in pretty good English, and then spoke to Roberto in their native tongue. The rest of his family simply stared at us with no smiles whatsoever. Which seemed to unnerve the family from Arizona I was traveling with on this excursion, but was just par for the course based on my own experience. Plus, I'm not much of a smiler myself, so I actually felt right at home.
I have very few photos from this point on because I felt it was rude and in poor taste to point a camera at these people in their home and start clicking away like they were some live attraction at the zoo. Ugh! That's so not my style. And when we got to the cave, I would soon discover another reason for not taking too many photos.
But I'll get back to that shortly.
While we were still at this makeshift outpost, our new guide informed us that we could leave our lunch packs and heavier items at the lodge before we began the hike. It was at this point that the mom and one of the daughters in the group I was travelling with declined to go to the cave for some inexplicable reason. They seemed not up to the physical challenge of it, which I thought was odd at the time. Turns out they probably knew more about it than I did!
The rest of us naive fools continued on our journey through the jungle, our guide carefully pointing out the best paths to take. After around 30 mins of swatting away low hanging tree branches and pesky insects alike, we happened upon a large depression in the sodden soil. This, it turns out, was the entrance to the Nivida bat cave. I had been expecting this huge, grand entrance at ground level ... but the reality was that I would have walked right by this hole in the ground and not even notice.
Well, okay, I exaggerate. There's no mistaking that this is the entry point into some mysterious cave system, but MY GOD I never would have gone down into that without our guide assuring us that this was indeed safe first. Whoa!
Those of us who were brave enough to go on this hike descended into the entrance with our guide. It quickly became apparent to me that this was not going to be an ideal location with which to bring my camera gear and take photos. Before arriving at the cave, I had pictured a big, open and airy tunnel that was *above* the ground and had maybe just a little sunlight pouring into it.
Nope. Nope. Nope.
In actuality, this was a very dark and very narrow cave system that was in fact the source of the river we had just traveled up to get here. What this meant was that, in addition to some extremely tight squeezes in there, we would be dealing with rising water levels the deeper we went into the cave. And this water was FREEZING!!!
Oh, and did I mention there were bats?
Not just a handful of bats, nor even a hundred bats. Try SEVERAL hundreds of bats! In the daytime they were mostly all asleep, even in the darkest corners of the cave. But with our approach, a few stirred awake and would fly back and forth over our heads as if to warn us not to fuck with their sleeping brood. I wasn't there to throw down with any bats, though, so this wasn't going to be a problem for me. Oh, and of course there were also *other* things living in this cave. Like blue and red crabs, some translucent shrimp swimming through our toes ... and spiders. Not little spiders, either. But big, noticeable ones -- the types that come out to greet you and say "hi." Yeah, those types of spiders. *yikes!*
But before we could get started on this fantastic voyage under the Earth, our guide led us across a wooden plank and down some slippery "steps" into the cave entrance and pointed to a rough stone slab off to one side. This was where we were supposed to strip off our clothes and leave all our things behind, because from here on out we were going to be swimming part of the way.
Wait, say what?
Somehow this point had not been communicated to me before the trip. I mean, I had my swim trunks on anyway because we had come here by water after all. And I knew it was going to be muddy and slippery inside the cave. But I thought, at worst, I would have to deal with water up to my shins. Yet here I was learning that, in fact, there would be moments inside the cave where water levels rise up to your armpits ... and even a little higher!
So needless to say I could not take my pack with my camera gear into the cave proper. My cam was definitely not waterproof! Hence why, unfortunately, I have absolutely no pics of this part of the excursion. Bummer! I did have my little Fujifilm underwater point-n-shoot, but it's about a decade old and had no low-light capabilities whatsoever. So I pretty much had to strip down to my trunks, set aside all my worldly possessions, and continue on the journey forward like some naked pilgrim entering the shrine of the Earth goddess, Gaia.
Wheee!
In addition to the deep, cold and clear water, we also had to deal with the fact that it was pitch black down here as well. We had all been warned to bring with us our personal headlamps (necessary for getting back to your treetop cabin at La Loma after dinner), so that wasn't an issue. But, wow, it was seriously DARK in this cave! Even with all of our lamps turned on at once, no one could see more than a few feet ahead and the back of the person in front. Our guide was that guy for me, as I was somehow the point person in our little group. So I followed him into the abyss, and the rest followed after.
I have to pause a little here to chuckle in memory of all that happened next. It's really a jumble to me, as it turned out to be one potentially perilous turn after another down there. At one point I slipped in waist high water into a sinkhole that had no bottom, so I had to paddle furiously for about two body lengths until I reached the other side of the cavern we had been in. Nothing serious, btw; just a misstep. A person who doesn't know how to swim wouldn't drown here because there are sides of the walls to stick to so that you never get in water over your head. Since I could swim, however, I usually ignored those areas and waded straight through the middle!
Yeah, I'm an idiot sometimes. But I digress.
At one point we could go no farther, and our guide gave us a choice: we could either turn around and head back the way we came; in effect, to end the tour right then and there. Or we could continue deeper into the cave, but it would require some climbing and a tight squeeze to make it happen. He pointed above our heads to a small, roughly man-sized opening (one made for a skinny man, mind you) up near the roof of the cavern. He demonstrated how to reach it, by basically pinioning himself between two stalagmites stretching all the way up to the ceiling, and then shimmying up their surfaces by placing his back against one and his feet against the other. Oh, was that all?
But ... we decided to continue forward since it was just myself, the father of the group I had come with, and his two remaining teenage children who were both athletes and thrill seekers, it seemed. Everyone was in decent shape, and no one among us was fat. And anyway, let me tell you: I was damn sure not going to be the 40 year old man being shown up by a couple of kids!
So, yeah, we climbed. I was at an advantage over this group due to upper body strength it turns out, and the kids especially seemed amazed that I reached the ceiling and that opening so quickly. It actually took them longer to get up there with me, and the daughter even had a mini panic attack because her feet kept slipping each time she tried to shimmy up. The father and myself reached down and hoisted her aloft.
The opening itself was another matter; it was seriously TIGHT! In order to make it through, you basically had to take a blind leap of faith while suspended around 3 and a half meters off the cave floor, and stick your feet through the literal hole in the wall without knowing what was on the other side. Of course, I knew that our guide was on the other side, and that he wouldn't have us do this if it wasn't safe. Famous last words, eh?
But although the walls of this hole rubbed the skin on my back and stomach raw in the process, I made it through safely. Turns out that the floor on the other side of the hole was much higher than in the previous "room," and so I only had to dangle from my fingers and let go once my feet touched the solid bedrock below. Or limestone, or whatever this cave was made from.
It was well worth all the effort, though. The cavern we found ourselves in now was filled with water over our heads. We stood on a jutting platform above this pool, and our guide had a smile on his face. Few visitors to the cave made it this far in, he revealed, at then he had a surprise to show us. He jumped in the pool, swam over to the other side, and climbed a knobbly stone wall until he reached this flat, slightly declining, surface at the top. Then he held his nose and slid straight off it, plunging several feet into the same pool below.
Yeah, that's right -- we had ourselves a cave slide!
What transpired next was a veritable Fraggle Rock of insane playfulness as all of us took turns swimming the pool, climbing to the top, and then sliding or leaping into it from above! The water was frigid, but oh so clean and refreshing! I wasn't about to drink it, of course, but I'll be damned if I didn't totally forget the 100-degree temps and thick humidity of the rainforest we had just traveled through to get here.
This is the strongest memory I have of this entire day -- sliding off that rock over and over again deep inside the bowels of the Earth, with perhaps a few hundred bats watching us from above. It's one of those moments in life when it hits home just how traveling outside your comfort zone and off the beaten, tourist-trap path can be so rewarding!
It's unfortunate that I don't have my own photos of the adventure to share, but if you would like to get some idea of what it was like, check out this person's video account of the excursion over on YouTube:
In the video, they take pretty much the same route we did to reach the cave, and then inside the cave as you can see -- things get pretty dark! This is what I was up against, folks.
Does that not seem like something you'd like to do yourself? You should!
After staying there for about an hour, we headed back through the cave and out, and hiked through the rainforest again to meet up with the ladies who had stayed behind at base camp. We ate lunch, played with the family's dogs and children, and then hopped back in the boat and made it back to La Loma just as the sun meandered on its downward path toward the horizon.
What a glorious way to end my stay in Bocas. Unfortunately, I would have to spend my night packing to return home the next day. It was over. No more adventures. I of course had known that I would eventually have to return to New York, I just didn't think the time to do so would come so quickly.
*sigh*
Continue on to Day 7 ---> (click)
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