Captain Cavewoman!
18 November 2005 (Friday) – Torotoro, Bolivia
We discovered why the annexe was so much cheaper. There was only water for certain hours of the day. Well, this is a small town, so water was not always available. But we could easily go to the main hostel for our morning washup.
We left with Antonio at around 7:30am. He said it was a 8km hike to the Caverna Humajalanta. We were walking through more strata of eroded rocks. Some of the massive rock slabs eroded in such a way that they looked like huge rectangular floor tiles, some almost too neat-looking. Gosh, the colours, the colours, the colours! We were crossing yellow, green, purple, red, orange rocks. We stopped occasionally to study more T-rex tracks. Sometimes, we had to climb down to the bottom of a rocky valley to get across the various hills. At another interesting spot, we saw huge boulders of volcanic basalt rocks that looked like they had just been spewed out of a volcano. The view was thoroughly thoroughly breathtaking!!
It took us about 2 hours to reach Caverna Humajalanta. Humajalanta is not Quechua, but another local language which I forgot. It means ‘Lost Water’. After a short rest at the entrance, we put on our helmets, left our backpacks in a dark corner and proceeded on with Antonio. Well, his friends and cousins had come along, so besides Antonio, Renaud and Naoki, there were 3 other teenage boys. 6 guys and 1 girl – me. Antonio told me I should follow right behind him at all times. No protest from me. The rest of the guys would have to take care of themselves.
Gosh, I had done some simple caving before but this was one of the most difficult and exhilirating caving I have ever done. The holes were really small and claustrophobic. Sometimes, we had to duck-walk, at other times, we literally were crawling on all fours or sliding across on our stomachs. Many of the holes were awkward or a steep drop. Antonio was very sweet to really support me and heave me up at the difficult spots. He showed me exactly which rock to hold and step on. We had to rappel down a few times as well into the darkness.
I admit, I was caving around like a GIRL. It did not help that after my lasik surgery to correct my vision, I found that I had more difficulties seeing in the dark. Things were darker than how I remembered before, and I seemed to find it difficult to tell differences in depth in the dark. So, I was never sure when I could jump safely, or where I should step gingerly. Argh, I am so not proud of myself.
But, like I said, it was a thoroughly fantastic caving experience. The other times had been chicken-feat compared to this. The caves were not really for the general public to walk right in and browse at the various creations, but for those who are able to squeeze through to experience the interior depth. Not for the hefty campesinas (strapped baby or not), I am afraid. At one point, we switched off our torches and kept quiet. We could just hear the tiny drops from the stalactites. There was even a pool of blind fish. But it was too dark for us to see any fish.
Finally, we surfaced after about 2 hours of caving. We had some sandwiches for lunch, and soon, headed back to Torotoro under the hot noon sun.
I was dead-on-arrival. I took a shower and crawled to bed to die. But Renaud and Naoki, those loquitos! (crazy men), still went on to climb another mountain right in front of the town in the late afternoon. It was really tough-going, they told me, but once they got to the top, they could see the entire breathtaking mountain range. Must have been amazing. We all agreed that we were absolutely thrilled to have made the trip here to Torotoro, a place rather difficult to go to, which is good as it thus did not allow for massive tourism.
Tags: 09) Bolivian Rhapsody, Torotoro
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