BIENVENIDO A LA PAGINA DEL GRUPO ESPELEOLOGICO ZOTZ

The Saga of Our Search for Toxín began with an article we read in Mexico Desconocido magazine, describing the longest cave in Jalisco (3005 meters). At the time, we were exploring leads near El Grullo and figured we’d just “hop” down to Toxín to take a look at its fabulous cave.

A year later we were still hopping. After giving up

on approaching Toxín from the north we tried the East, ending up in San Pedro Toxín, to our surprise one mountain away for our goal. Now it was nearly the height of the dry season and we decided to try again, over the long 5 de Mayo weekend, this time for the South via Colima. Who would have thought we were going to be rewarded not only by seeing Jalisco’s longest cave, but by discovering what might possibly be its most beautiful as well¡.

“Sorry, señores, we have no gas station here.”....... Such words have the power to strike terror in the hearts of the mightiest adventurers, especially if they are crazy enough to leave their jerry cans at home in order to squeeze four cavers into a tiny, overloaded Jeep. However, in this case it was precisely a lack of gas that led us to Peña Colorada, a tiny mining community in western Colima, right on the border of Jalisco. You won’t find it on most maps, but it does have a gas station. Seven kilometers from this settlement lies the biggest town of Minatitlán, which is on the map, but has no gas. This may seem odd, if like us, you first envisioned Peña Colorada as a rough In run-down mining camp. To our surprise, it turned out to be an ultramodern slice of suburbia with wide streets, lush lawns and a space-age church. It looked so much like a southern California that I nearly spoke to the service Station attendant in English when I broached our favorite subject as he filled our thirsty Jeep with gas: “Any caves around her”?. “No se nada de cuevas.” Said the man, scratching his head.

But a boy who was listening in spoke up and told us we’d a cave “5O0 meter long” at El Salto, a picnic spot outside town. Since we were all as hungry as the car was thirsty, we decided to have a lunch at El. Salto never suspecting we’d end up spending the night there.

Imagine an absolutely gorgeous waterfall tumbling over a delicately colored sheer cliff, into a pool of cool, crystal-clear water, all in full view of an ideal camping spot on a little beach next to a river made to be swum in. Add canyon walls to give the place privacy, and you’ve got El Salto.

The only problem was that somebody had beat us to it and we had to make do with the nearby picnic area, which we had all to ourselves, even though it was May 5, a major holiday. We figure next time we’re out that way, the unbelievable beach will be ours.

Naturally the only directions we had to the cave were “You can’t miss it”. We had also neglected to ask whether the entrance was a crack, an unobtrusive hole in the ground, a gaping maw, or what. On top of that, the boys who, unfortunately had possession to that perfect camping spot had never heard of any caves in the area. Thus, we wandered along the riverside, poking around everywhere and soon came to an extraordinary section of canyon wall which could be described as a cave “inside out”.

The towering wall was all stalactites and holes, over which had grown a thick layer of stringy green moss. Logs lying on the ground below were covered with quarter-inch layer of limestone that had dripped from the stalactites above. loser inspection of the wall revealed a porous surface resembling petrified spaghetti.

Sometimes told us we were not far from a cave entrance.

Scrambling about this hole-infested wall, we finally located a small chamber 3meters high and 9meters long. Like shredded wheat. At the end of this room there was a little hole about 50cm (1 1/2 feet) high and just wide enough to squeeze through it was blowing, and our flashlight showed blackness beyond. Susy, Mano, Jesús and I stood up inside the cave and, shone our light around us.

The exterior surface had intrigue us, but this room complete took our breath away. Every wall shimmered with complicated white formations. From the ceiling, a dragon’s head reached down toward us, with toothy jaws open wide.

This room was only 10 by 20mts but we spent a long time examining every nook and cranny of it, each of us occasionally calling the others to come and behold some wonder, suet or a particularly long and slender stalactite.

At one end of the room, the cave narrows and you climb up to a passage almost completely blocked by tall, graceful columns about 30cm wide.

As we were passing through, Jesús climbed up one side and stuck his head into a small niche. “Come take a look here,” he said laconically. Standing on tiptoes, I pushed my head into the small opening. As I had expected, I found myself encircled by tiny, beautiful formations. ¡Also found myself eyeball to eyeball with a little bat which glared at me as if to say. “What are you doing in my bedroom?”.

Just as it started to gnash its teeth at me, Jesús, down below, casually remarked, “I think it’s a vampire.” We moved on. The next room must have been truly spectacular once upon a time, but much of its former beauty lay broken to pieces on the floor. Signatures on the walls proved it was not an earthquake that had destroyed, in minutes, what nature had taken centuries to create.

We called this place The Vandal’s Den and moved on to the last room of the cave, a bit difficult to squeeze into, where many of the decorations are formed out of a beautiful, fire-engine-red mineral.

Elated at our find. We decided we would spend the night camped aside the river, and map the cave the next morning. Mano and I took a quick trip to Peña Colorada to buy beer and soft drinks. There was no store to be found, but we did locate a woman who sold what we needed out of her kitchen. When we mentioned the cave, she beamed. “0h yes, I’ve heard of it. In fact, my little boy brought home a whole armload of beautiful things he got out of there.

” This plus a later experience Susy has with several other “junior cove tooters,” convinced us something had to be done to protect El Salto and other caves. What she told them about the delicacy and beauty of caves had simply never occurred to them and they ended up thanking for “the lesson.” This has got us started on several projects to educated people about caves.

That night, Susy and I put up our tent while Jesús and Mano decided to sleep under the stars, “because there’s no chance of rain, and the ground’s too hard to pound our stakes into.”

Next morning we awoke to full orchestra of exotic bird calls, including those of wild parrots and zenzontles, whose songs resembles three flutes being played at once. I was up and about early, whereas Jesus and Mano were tossing around, wrapped up in sleeping bags and mosquito setting. “¿How did you guys sleep?” In reply, Jesus shows me the back of his neck, which looked like a pincushion.

“First we were attacked by mosquitoes, so we spread the net over us. Then we started getting some really big bites. We turned on our flashlights and discovered we were surrounded by “chinches hociconas.” Jesus had even captured a pair of them, two-inch long, flat-blooded, blood-sucking critters with an injection needle 1/2 inch long. Ah, but it’s the dry season, so we needs a tent.

Finally, we got our two friends (No doubt -weak from loss of blood) out of their sleeping bags and to the breakfast table (we had a dozen to choose from), after which we surveyed the cave a 100-foot tape and our super German-made. Wilkie surveyor’s compass.

Though it was only 35mts long instead of 500 meters, they were 35mts of great beauty, well worth revisiting. On top of that, just before we left, we talked to some boys who told us they had heard of two other caves in the area. We look forward to seeing them.

From El Salto cave we set out again for El Resumidero de Toxín. Just as the Arabs have an incredible rich variety of words to describe what in our language goes by the simple name of “camel,” so you can find in Mexico a lot more words for “dirt road” than you can shake a stick at.

On our way from Minatitlán to Toxín. I think

we experienced very single one of them, finishing up with a “brecha” which looked pretty much like a glorified footpath to me.

By the time we bounced over the last few meters of it, all of us inside the Jeep felt as hot, and shaken as popcorn in a pot. Somehow, we had managed to arrive at the cavesite without actually passing through the (to us) nearly mythologically assumed we would find it further down the brecha.

This time we had no problems locating the entrance, a pit full of large rocks surrounded by thick vegetation and officially known as the Entrada Fosil. We rigged a cable ladder for the six meter drop, ever though it looked climbable, and soon found ourselves about to enter the largest room we had ever seen in a Jalisco cave. The floor, walls and ceiling were a dull, light-absorbing brown. Although it was the dry season outside the cave, this room was so moist that there was actually fog in the air, making it seem a lot larger than its true width of 30meters or so. We stepped inside and began to explore the place.

Suddenly we heard a loud “chirp” followd by another. We could hear the flutter of wings, but couldn’t imagine what sort of bird (for it was definitely not the cry of a bat) might be flapping aroun that room in utter darkness .... and no matter how quickly we shone our lights, we were unable to spot the mysterious creature.

We had in hand a map of the cave published in the December ‘85 Newsletter of the Association for Mexican Cave Studies, but at first we couldn’t believe that we were really in that small, insignificant room shown on the map. But, ¿ramal? (passage) and, in fact, downward slope of our little room did lead us to a river passage heading two ways. However, befor proceding, we decidet to go back to the entrance area to pick up some short ropes we had left there.

We had set aside the whole of the next day only for exploring the cave, which meant we thought we’d have plenty of time for what all cavers dread (except those responsibles): “serious” photography.

Among other things, this usually inexact science involves setting up a tripod, making everyone turn off their lights and having some poor soul (Mano in this case) trudge around the room in the dark, setting off endless flashes to “paint” the place with light. 99% of the time, the resulting slides only provoke comments like “¡What? its underexposed!” and “Gee, I wonder what that is?” but this merely makes the cave photographer more determined than ever to take a few dozen “final” shots. Actually, Toxin cave has so many nice features that none of us noticed how much time we were spending on photos. The nicest room we found was a little one near the entrance, which was literally stuffed with stalactites, sheer curtains of delicate pink hues and lots of flowstone. In this “throne room, we found not a trace of the mud that coats the other parts of the cave.

While Mano and I continued to immortalize the cave on film (or die trying) Jesús and Susy rigged the “passage” room (about 10mts in diameter which we hoped wou1d open us a whole new virgin wilderness, all to the glory of Zotz.

The mud-encrusted room had a steeply sloping, whirlpool shaped floor that took Jesús, hanging on to a hand line, ever download in a constantly narrowing, ever muckier passage. Suddenly he shouted: “I found it!” “What? You mean a new passage leading off into the unknown?” “No, I mean the chirping cave bird... it’s a little frog!” Sure enough, those of us up above looked around and started finding frogs everywhere. How they avoid chirping simultaneously. I don’t know. Anyhow, it was a good lesson on the power of suggestion.

Besides, a see-in-the-dark cave frog may turn out to be just as odd as our imaginary bird. “Ramal Zotz” went 31meters (102feet) and stopped dead. So much for glory. We climbed out, took more-time-consuming photos in the riverbed and left the cave after seven hours inside. We had seen only a tiny fraction of its three-kilometer length, but had thoroughly enjoyed every meter of it.

That evening, Susy started working on a spaghetti dinner while Mano and I drove to Toxín for water and/or refreshments. We spent a half-hour in this pursuit without coming across a sign of human habitation and finally turned back, sadly informing our companions that we’d be using the spaghetti water to make coffee the next morning. As we headed back home, we came across a child and asked him where Toxin was?. “Right over there,” he said pointing at what looked like two little shacks on a nearby hillside.

Consoled at finally having had a glimpse of the city of our dream, we drove on, wistfully speculating on the next 2,855mts of the now 3,036meter-long Resumidero de Toxin.