20th July – Sunday

I didn’t manage to catch up on myself, the website always takes longer than expected. However, I did finish June, which I feel is quite a mile stone in itself. I will do a little bit more this afternoon.

Early yesterday evening three very loud and very young girls moved into the room above me. I wanted to kill them, they were so loud, screaming and jumping around, as little girls do! But it was still daytime, as such, so I went down to the restaurant and chilled in a hammock. Being an older biddy, I went to bed before them. Uhm, when they finally retired, they yet again felt the need to scream and jump around the room, so I shouted up to them ‘hey, girls!’. That did the trick, I could hear them going ‘shh, there is someone down there’. They were as quiet as mice after that – bless them.

I went to the Kanba caves, this morning and wow, what an experience, and I got a lot more than I bargained for. The guide first took us to a swing jump into the Cahabón River. This I did not do, not only for the fear of getting water up my nose and never coming up again, the first girl did a very painful looking belly flop which totally put me and another girl off. However, I did do the tube ride down the river, and past my hostel, which was actually quite fun and relaxing. When we got out of the river there was a pick-up and I got all excited thinking we were going to be driven back, but I was mistaken. We had to walk, but it was not far, about 20 minutes. After that, we went to the waterfall, which is about 20 minutes from my hostel, the belly flop girl decided to be brave and did the cliff jump, but again, I chickened out. Next time I am in a ‘safe’ pool I will practice jumping in and not getting water up my nose because, to be honest, I would like to have a go at cliff jumping before I’m too old. Finally, we climbed up a few stairs to the mouth of the cave. The guide gave us a candle each and in we went, into the waist deep cold waters and the pure darkness of the caves, it was all very nerve recking but I held my breath and onward I went. Not far in we stopped and the guide painted our faces with black stuff from the cave walls. We then followed a rope and moved further into the cave and even more darkness. It was quite scary as the floor was very rocky, there were a lot of holes to fall down into and by now we were literally up to our shoulders in water; we were warned to take care of our heads, backs, feet and hands. The worst part for me was the first ladder, it went up vertically for about a dozen steps and then the steps were at a 45degree following the slope of the stones, it wasn’t the fact that it was a ladder, it was the fact that it was so close to the rocks that there was hardly any space to put your feet on the rungs. To top that off we had to pull ourselves up the final incline, to safety, using a rope. The rocks were wet and slippery and I was in panic mode, I’m really not that strong anymore and, not only was I scared about losing my footing, I was also really paranoid that I wasn’t going to be able to pull myself up on the rope. You should have heard the swear words coming out of my mouth, I am not sure if the French girls and Israeli guy with us fully understood me, but I expect they got the gist of it. At one point the guide was telling me to mover over to the other side, I just looked at him, told him I really couldn’t so he moved out of the way and pulled me to safety. I was shaking by this point and not looking forward to the return journey and having to lower myself, via the rope, onto the ladder. However, the guide reassured me we would be using a different method to descend the rocks.

At the end point of our adventure there was a waterfall that, as an optional event, you could pull yourself up using a rope, I did not do this. However, I had no choice when it came to going under the waterfall and jumping into the water below, as this was the start of our return journey. Luckily it wasn’t a high jump, the water was not deep and I was able to hold my nose, thinking about it now, it was actually quite fun, especially having the waterfall cascade down onto me. So, instead of going back down rope and that horrendous first ladder we had to shoot down a very tiny hole, the guide told us to veer left. OMG, I had to propel myself down a water hole into the unknown, but it was that or the ladder, so I propelled myself and it really wasn’t as bad as expected. The tunnel / hole was not very long and the water at the end not deep, thank god.  

When we emerged back into day light, I felt exhilarated, regardless of my nerves and aching body the experience had been awesome, and the caves, what we had managed to see of them, absolutely stunningly beautiful. But most of all I had pushed myself to do something very much out of my comfort zone. I just looked at the guide, with a beaming grin, and told him that I wanted do it all over again.

The rest of the group were going to the pools so I walked back to the hostel feeling so proud of myself. After my shower I walked back into the village and up to the entrance to the pools and was quite disappointed that the ladies at the kiosk wouldn’t change my 100q note. I knew the little old lady at the shop that I was going to buy from my goods from probably wouldn’t have change, so in the end, I had to buy a beer from another shop in order to get change. It was half the price to the beers at the hostel! When I say shop, I don’t mean shops like we have in the UK, these shops are wooden huts and they serve you through a window and most of them only sell crisps and biscuits and an array of other unhealthy munchies.

It was very amusing watching the little old lady at the shop I was buying from trying to calculate the cost of my goods. It took her several attempts before she finally told me the cost, which I didn’t understand. I gave her what I thought would be more than enough to cover my purchase