caving

as soon as we got the eldest KB, we packed him into a bus and headed for la fortuna -- costa rica's home of volcan arenal. on the bus we met two new friends. one was siobhan and the other was michael. michael had some friends who wanted to go to the hostel called gringo pete's in la fortuna, so we tagged along with them. we became a group of 8 people and 8 big backpacks heading for gringo pete's.

gringo pete accommodated all of us, so we had a bunch of new friends. gringo pete had a lot of tours, including a trip to go caving which cost $48USD that looked fun but expensive. well, we took the $17 trip to see the volcano erupt and then soak in its hot spring. we did indeed see red-hot rocks and gravel slide down the side of arenal several times, and the tour even included delicious rum and coke.

as for the caving, we decided we'd try to find those caves on our own. michael decided to join us. we got up bright and early and started planning how to get to the town of vedano, which is where the caves are located. eventually we discovered, at the bus station, that there would be a bus going directly to vedano within 15 minutes. that was fortunate!

when we arrived in vedano, we asked directions to the caves and were given directions to the owner of said caves, just down the street. she offered to give us a ride to the caves and phoned ahead to book us a guide.
we got suited up with rubber boots, helmets, dust masks (because guano can get really smelly), and our headlamps, plus dad's camera that has the waterproof diving case. when we reached the entrance to the cave, our guide, alonzo, said that we could go the difficult way or the easy way. michael, keeana, and i all shouted 'difficult!!' but dad hesitated. he wondered just how difficult it would be. alonzo said it was not that difficult, just some small passages and some climbing. he said if dad wanted to try it we would help him. so dad agreed.



at first in the caves we were introduced to the locals -- little teeny bats that live in family groups and give off an acid that has actually carved holes in the ceiling of the cave. the water was deep enough to slosh over the tops of our boots so we all got soaking wet feet straight away. then we quickly got to the 'difficult part'.


sure enough, we had to wiggle through a small hole, sideways. then we had to climb up a precipice, which was scary. alonzo helped by letting us stand on his knee. of course michael didn't need any help; he scampered up like a monkey. then we went down through a tunnel that took us back to the place where we'd entered.

as we went through the narrow passageways on the way to the next 'room', alonzo found a lovely little stingless scorpion spider. we each took a turn to introduce ourselves.

next we came to a room where the stream from above ground was coming down. it was called the shower, for obvious reasons.

the end of the cave (actually the farthest point tourists are allowed to go because the rest is really slippery) had a lot of calcium deposit that made really beautiful formations, including some brain coral that was fossilised down there. really neat. after admiring that we started to make our way out again.



we were supposed to get back to vedano to catch the 1:00 bus, so we started walking from the farm the caves are on to the town. about 2/3rds of the way there, michael cleverly flagged an empty cow truck that gave us a ride the rest of the way.

by 2:00 we were on the 1:00 bus, but it didn't go back to la fortuna. we got dropped off in tanque, a few kilometres from la fortuna, and enjoyed the view from the tanque bus corner for about two hours until a la fortuna bus finally happened along. by the time we got back to gringo pete's, we were ready for a beer and a shower, but all in all it was a super-fun adventure.