CHIQUILICHE CAVE

J. Pint

A good way to visit the beautiful limestone hills outside Chiquilistlán is to ask Luis Rojas to guide you to Chiquiliche Cave. Since “Dracula” Rojas has a way of vanishing at the most unexpected moments, you will have plenty of time to get acquainted with cornfields two meters tall and inpenetrable tangles of thorny maleza. When you finally beat your way out of the bush, you’re sure to find Luis somewhere up ahead puffing on a cigarette and asking you, “What took so long?”

The Chiquiliche hills are also great for sudden torrential rains. Once, we arrived back at our car soaking wet only to discover that the vado (dip) separating us from Chiquilistlán had turned into the Amazon River and we were trapped right where we parked for a couple of hours. This is definitely a good place to bring along your Cave Capers board.

The layout of this cave is a bit unusual. The “Main Entrance” is a wide slot about 35 meters long with a steeply sloping floor at the bottom. The upper end of the slot is reachable by two climbable drops of about seven and two meters. A cable ladder makes it easy, but no matter what, the climber should be belayed.

At the bottom of the slot you have access to three different passages. One of these is the roofed prolongation of the slot itself. One summer day we were in this passage at noon and discovered that sunshine pouring through several holes in the high ceiling create impressive beams of light just begging to be photographed ingeniously.

On Sept 17, 2000, we decided to take up the challenge and brought along Roberto Barrero, who offered to be the guinea pig that would dangle in a beam while the rest of us clicked away at our shutters.

The first surprise occurred when we reached the slot and discovered that yours truly had forgotten to bring along the cable ladder. “You mean I’ve got to do that climb hand over hand?” moaned Susy, who decided she would rather stay above and assist Roberto with his rappel. Maybe, I thought, Susy will encounter some of the bat hunters we had run into on a previous occasion. These guys had brought their guns to the cave hoping to shoot a few “vampires” and Susy would be the ideal person to convince them that all the bats we had found in this cave were friendly ones which deserved protection, not a massacre. Since Jesús hadn’t brought his helmet (are we all a little out of practice?) he was able to borrow Susy’s,  once he reshaped his head to fit it.

While Jesús, Luis and I set up cameras below, Roberto tossed down the 30-meter rope which was supposed to reach the bottom, but didn’t. Since it was only two meters short, Roberto attached an 8mm cord to the end of it. Soon he was suspended in the sunbeam, his gleaming white coveralls suggesting an astronaut floating in space at the end of an umbilical cord.  After we had taken enough pictures to give him a double case of harnessitis, Roberto slid down to the 8mm connection and somehow got stuck at the knot. Since we thought it was unfair for anyone to end his days dangling only one meter from the bottom of a cave, Roberto was initiated into the top-secret, ZOTZ “Rope-Escape Technique” which was been passed down to us by the Mayan Indians, Zotz Branch, of course. This technique works best if someone with strong shoulders (like Dracula Rojas, for example) happens to be in the vicinity.

After Roberto’s rescue, we worked on a less exciting project: trying to photograph small speleothems by the light of  a white-LED (Light-Emitting Diode) flashlight. We discovered that the yellow cast of an ordinary flashlight is replaced by the  cold blue-green cast of the LEDs which doesn’t make for much of an improvement. However, the LEDs did give a nice, even light.

We exited the Slot either by brute force or consummate climbing skill, according to our various talents or lack thereof, and headed for the truck and cold, delicious, cerveza León.