guano in my pocket

Hello from Costa Rica!
Just returned from a spelunking excursion at Costa Rica´s Venado Caves.  We return victorious and covered in guano.  For those who are not familiar with the term ¨guano¨, it is the scientific name for bat excrement (yes, poo-poo/pee-pee).  As for the title of my blog, while I was washing off my clothes from our cave trek I happen to stumble across some chunks of guano that I, unbeknownstly, smuggled out of the caves in my back pocket.  Yucky!

Experiencing the caverns was exhilarating.  The entrance of the cave was right at the basin of a river (leading right into the cave).  Inside, we saw underground waterfalls, huge columns of glittery calcium carbonate; stalactites, stalagmites, and at times we were standing in thigh deep water (waist deep for Jayden) filled with little black fish.  There were an assortment of creatures and eyeless critters (i.e. bats, scorpion spiders as big as one´s hand, and cave crickets)!  We would walk into huge spacious caverns and then squeeze into claustrophobically small spaces.

One of the scariest and yet most memorable moments, was squeezing through what our guide called the ¨the birthing tunnel¨.  The technique to get through was to lay horizontally on your back, going in feet first.  You pass your first arm into the tunnel (since both shoulders could not fit through at the same time) and then while on your back, you pull/push yourself with your arms while inching forward with your back.  It was so tight, even Jay had a little trouble.  Once we were through the other side, it was a narrow crevice with a 6 foot wall we had to scale to get out.  There was barely a foothold anywhere, so it took alot of upper body strength, a boost from our guide, and a prayer here and there.  At this point, I was almost ready to turn back, the only thing that kept me going was the inability to scale back down the 6 foot wall to turn back.  So we forged on and we are so glad we did.  Conquering the underworld has made us feel on top of the world!