Caving

 While our youngest son was visiting, we did some caving in Samar. Exploring caves had never been a big desire of mine as I don't like the dark or being in small spaces. It sets off my claustrophobic tendancies. But hey, it might be fun. First, we hiked into the cave through jungle. In the photo, we are literally where the road ends, with only jungle in front of us.

We hiked to the entrance of the cave where we ate lunch and were oriented about caving. The food was great. The history of caving interesting. The desire to enter nil. But in we went anyways. I never said I was smart. This picture is at a viewpoint across the valley. We entered in the cave behind Jack.

Inside the cave, we got to walk over loose rocks and around stalagtites and stalagmites. We walked through mud and bat guano. We waded through a couple of indoor streams and saw an indoor lake. There was one place where they filled out water bottle with pure water dripping down. It tasted good and we didn't get sick later. We climbed up a pile of rocks only to get to climb down a rock face on the other side. We climbed from the uppermost light to the bottom. It was like climbing down 3 stories. The guide said that caves have varied terrain just like outside caves. He was right. There were places in the caves that reminded me of alien terrains. It was so desolate and lonely. The picture below had a rock that looks like a buddha on top of the cliff.

The picture below shows the rock face we climbed down. We started at the top light. That is Jared. I am the light about halfway down. Jack had gone down first and took the picture of us. It was a long climb down but we were belayed, just in case we fell. The guides of course just ran up and down the rocks.

Inside the cave was all sorts of animals. In the center of the picture below is an albino crab with no eyes. We saw albino fish without eyes in the cavern lake. The water was so clear. There were lots of crickets with super long antanae they used to feel their way around the dark.

We even found snakes in the cave. Jack and Jared were super interested. I wasn't.

After almost three hours in the dark, with only our headlamps for light, traversing streams, muddy banks, slippery and sharp rocks, scaling mountains, and everything else, we finally get to the exit. Of course, there's this super deep lake we needed to cross before we could get out. The bright side is that is mostly washed off the guano from the deep muck we had to walk through to get to the lake. Jack and Jared both lost a shoe and had to retrieve it from that muck. Your feet would sink in up to your shins. Jack and I were so tired, we couldn't walk well. I ended up doing more swimming than walking. The water was a great temperature and felt divine. If only we could have floated back.

Instead, remember that mountain that the cave was in. We had crossed under it and now needed to cross back over it so we could get a ride back. Jack and were exhausted. We kept falling on the shifting rocks and tripping over the tangled flora. The guides finally cut us walking sticks, which helped us stay upright. It still took another 3 hours to get out. I was beyond exhausted. I wanted to sit and cry but no one else was going to get me out of there; I had to do it myself. After over an hour and a half of hiking, the sun sank and we had to hike the rest of the way in the dark. The last picture is of us with our walking sticks at the end. We made it. I should have learned my lesson not to hike with a marine. Jared did great. He even carried our backpack of supplies with him. I learned that I am not a huge fan of caving. I can live just fine without going into another one ever again in my life.