I´m gonna be sore tomorrow

So there I was.

Standing in a small room half a kilometer inside a cave that was pitch black except for the faint glow of three cellphones and a flashlight. Mud and dirt and presumably bat poop was covering my shoes and my jeans, and my hair.

Those accompanying me in the cave room was a girl carrying a fake coach bag, her boyfriend who was displaying all the characteristics of being extremely high, and an armed guard in full army fatigue with a semi-automatic M16 in one hand, and a cell phone playing the song “What is Love” at high volume (Night at the Roxbury).

It was quite a moment for reflection.

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I suppose I should describe how I got to this interesting and precarious position.

Where to begin.

Fifteen miles from Catacamas lives another Peace Corps volunteer named Josh whose site is way up in the mountains of Talgua. Josh is a Protected Areas Management volunteer. Within the Peace Corps ranks, the PAMer’s are known as the, how should I say, hippies. When you think of a “typical Peace corps experience”, this is what you picture. They are frequently put in extremely remote areas, and are typically the ones literally living in mud huts without electricity and ride their horses to work.

Well this is Josh’s exact situation, except his house is not made of mud, it made of a cement and brick mixture. But yea, no electricity and yes, he has a horse (some people have all the luck).

So you can understand why I was so eager to visit his site in Talgua.

This morning I hopped on the bus from Real to Catacamas where I met up with fellow H-16 volunteer Matteo, who is a wat/san friend of mine. After a brief search for coffee, we took the 11:00 bus to Talgua.

A one-hour bus ride on a bumpy dirt road that goes up through the mountains, past a few small villages, past several small homes with women carrying a weeks worth of food boarding and unloading. This trip would have taken no more than 20 minutes if the roads were paved and we made fewer stops. But, like the rest of Honduras, rural areas are simply not developed and so a simple bus ride turns into a grueling tiresome ordeal. Whatever.

Talgua

When we finally reached Talgua, Josh was there to meet us and show us around his town. Talgua also happens to be the home of the aforementioned caves which have an obscure and slightly tainted history.

This is because the Cave of the Glowing Skulls is controversial. In 1994, two Peace Corps Volunteers and two locals were hiking in the caves and discovered a room with a cluster of human skulls. The bones were emitting a greenish sparkly glow due to mineral deposits over the years .

Unfortunately after that, no one is really sure what happened to the remains. Some of the skulls were taken for analysis. Once word got out, some were stolen and some were ruined. No one really knows. But of the 23 initial ones, only three or four are still in the cave – supposedly.

replica of what the skulls PROBABLY look like

So of course, our first order of business in Talgua was to visit the caves and see if we can get a peek at the remaining skulls. Josh, being the PAMer that he is, was able to get Matteo and I in to the national park for free [score] and seemed to know half the people that worked there as well.

The first cave we went to was the touristy cave I suppose. There was a marked entrance, there were guides in matching blue polo’s for hire, there was a bridge to get in and lights illuminating the path. The inside of the cave was spectacular and wet. I have been to living caves before and this one was fairly similar.

The opening of the cave was the size of an elevator and quickly narrowed to a small corridor through which the three of us could walk but not without ducking to avoid stalagmites. (This country is just not set up for tall people…). The walkway was a metal grated bridge with a rope handle and electric lights strategically positioned to illuminate the best rock formations and show the magnitude of the caverns. At its grandest point, we were standing in a room the size of a medium-sized house. The air was cooler, denser and smelled musty and stale. The mixture of bat poop and lighter fluid I was told.

The water droplets in the air prevented me from getting many good shots with my crummy little pocket camera. Also the flash was being fickle so it was kind of a lost cause. So here are a few of mine and a few professional shots I lifted from the internet. I’m sure you will be able to tell which is which.

Since this past rainy season has been pretty fuerte around here, the small stream that runs through the cave was swift and loud. In places, the sounds of the current splashing on huge boulders was so loud we had to yell to be heard. Just walking along the lit path I was ankle deep in water in some places.

We walked all the way to what is considered the end of the trail thoroughly impressed but still wanting more. Josh being the seasoned cave-walker that he is, took Matteo and I a little farther to see if we could find the skulls. After ducking a few roped-off walkways we climbed a set of stairs that was so rotted through all that was left of the staircase was the metal frame. We cautiously climbed to the top, but were disappointed to discover a gate blocking the rest of the way. The gate was about the size of a sewer grate and had a giant padlock barring our entrance.

We asked Josh if he could work is PAMer-status magic and talk to the person with the key. But he informed us that the key is probably lost and no one in the community knows where it is or who had it last. More evidence of the disorganization and corruption at work…)

Disappointed, we turned around and found the roped off path once again to head out.

Reemerging from that cave was like going from a dark cool movie theater into a sauna. The day had become significantly hotter and stickier, the sun was stronger and a sign of only more sweating to come.

Matteo and I still wanted to see Josh’s town, which is way up in the mountains so we went about three kilometers directly up in the rainforest. The views are simply incredible. Even in the higher altitudes it was damn hot. I was torn between staring out at the amazing vistas and watching my step so I didn’t slip off the rocky path and fall down a hill. We saw an owl which was odd since it was the middle of the day. But a cool sight nonetheless.

Coffee break

I don’t really think you can call it a village where Josh’s house is. It’s not really a neighborhood either. It’s just a cluster of 5 small houses way way up on the hillside of a mountain. We met his former host-family and counterpart. Their modest house was a cement structure with cement floors and a huge fogon over out front.  There had to have been thirty or more chickens and chicks and roosters running around the yard and the little garden.

We took a little rest at this house and drank some seriously amazing coffee and chatted with his family. (The coffee trees were visible in the distance and in the backyard there was a mat covered in green coffee beans drying in the sun. That’s about as organic as it gets from what I can tell) There was another gringo visiting this family, a sophomore from Stanford who was working at the agriculture university in Catacamas. His name was Andrew and Josh and Matteo and I told him all about the Peace Corps. Once I told him what I do[health education stuff], his first question was “what kinds of reactions do you get when you teach condom demonstrations here?”.  A question that never fails to crack me up and I love telling the story of our first AIDS charla back in La Paz.

Anyway.

After a nice chat we checked out Josh’s house. Which is literally a two-room cement building (see photo above).  There is indeed no electricity and no plumbing. There is no kitchen; he eats his meals with the family next door – the ones with the awesome coffee.

The first time I met Josh and he told us about his living situation, you know, with seriously no amenities. I asked all the inane questions you could imagine such as, how do you see at night, where is your water from, how do you charge your cell phone and don’t you freak out without a computer?

He answered all of these questions with patience and in a way that tells me that I am not the first to ask him these things.

He is clearly lucky to have one of the most gorgeous sites in all of Peace Corps Honduras. Because even though I couldn’t handle living the way the Talugans do, I plan to visit frequently – and when I go back next time I am bringing my good camera.*

So anyway. His counterpart, Calixto is a frightfully intelligent man who knows everything about the flora and fauna of the area. He is extremely hospitable, and asked us if we want to go check out another cave, one that was not all developed and located at the top of a different mountain. No handrails, no lit pathways, no guides in polo’s — you get the idea.

Did we want to go?

Um, duh.

So Calixto and Josh leading the way, Matteo and Andrew and I followed through more dense tropical rainforest, across even more rock-filled creeks and yet another bridge with fantastic views of valleys.

You’d think one might tire of all the breathtaking landscapes around here.

I actually got pretty winded during this leg of the hike. I was breathing pretty heavily. I know I say it almost every day but this time I really mean it.  I had never sweat so much in my entire life. My jeans were soaked through. My hair was dripping and stuck to my neck and as Calixto so kindly pointed out, my face was bright red.

Really sexy as you can imagine.

Vanity aside.

you gotta know which ones are safe for eatin

We pass a lot of things of interest on our way to the second cave. Random animal sightings, wild berries for tasting. Hopefully I wont regret that later…

We also passed by one of the many armed guards in this country who never seem to actually be guarding anything but walk around with their guns anyway. This one however was apparently an amigo of Josh’s. I don’t really know what an armed guard was doing in the middle of the woods but I guess he wasn’t too busy because he decided to walk with us a ways. I actually didn’t notice his presence until I looked back a few yards at our train of hikers and noticed him pulling up the rear.

And we stopped at a really cool vine swing that swung out over the side of the mountain. Three huge vines several inches thick where you hang on, jump off a big rock and swing out, and then Juan would catch you and pull you back to the rock platform.

Oh it was awesome. At first I thought about what my dad would say, since he is one of the most cautious people I have ever met (he also has the uncanny ability to calculate risk in a mathematical form to explain the worst possible outcome of any given situation). So in thinking about what would dad do, I carefully watched two big guys and one skinny guy go first, just to be sure. And then I decided that it was totally safe and would definitely, probably, hold my weight. So here is a short clip of my Tarzan action.

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Sorry it stops mid-swing. Battery died. But if you were wondering, I did make it back to the rock platform.

So we finally reach the entrance to the second cave. There wasn’t really an opening to this one. It just looked like someone sawed a mountain in half to expose ine thousand giant rock formations. Then there was  a 30-foot drop which was, of course, the only way to get inside. This did not bode well for me, since I have a habit of falling unfortunately.**

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Here have a look. Sorry it’s so short. Once again, shoddy camera battery. But you can see Matteo standing on the left, Calixto in the middle and Josh to the right, explaining our plan of action.

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As we descend into the center of this huge cave-room opening thing, I hear some strange howling noises. Naturally I assume weirdest thing possible, like a giant howler monkey had been stranded in a crevice somewhere and was now crying for help.

Because, uh. That’s what it sounded like.

But Calixto told me it was just people making noises somewhere within. As luck would have it (or not, whichever way you look at it), it was in fact two people sitting near one of the boulders near the entrance. One heavy-set guy who seemed to be having trouble standing and didn’t say much. His girlfriend was standing, wearing jeans and a cute top and some daintly little kitten heels. All I could think was how did she managed to get this far without breaking any visible sweat and still looking cute?  And in heeled shoes no less. How Honduran women do it, I will never ever know.  Anyway.

The pair see’s Calixto and Josh leading the way and decide to join our train. We descend deeper into the cave. Josh handed me a small flashlight and I almost laughed because the thing was so small. It looked like it might have come from a cereal box. Or gumball machine. But then I turned it on and it’s all LED-lights that could probably blind someone. He has clearly done this before.

So we descend.

In some places, the corridors were the width of a sewer grate. We had to bend, crawl and otherwise contort our bodies to fit through the passageways.  One time I was actually hoisting myself up from one slippery rock formation to the platform above, and I nailed my knee on a stalactite.  Damn those century-old rock-formations. Always one where you least expect it.

My knee went numb for a bit and I was holding up the line until the feeling returned to my leg. That’s gonna hurt tomorrow.

The men were all very caballero and offered to help me and the other chick when things got particularly steep. But it was simply too dark and slippery to trust that their balance was good enough for the both of us. So I ambled along, knowing that I could break my ankle at any minute. (Which of course got me thinking about what would happen if I actually were to break something. I concluded that I would almost certainly die right there in that cave because there is no way anyone could carry me out the way we came).

After a particularly snug crawl we emerged into the largest room yet.

Without sounding repetitive, this cavern was breathtaking. If the first room of the other cave was the size of a house, this one was the size of a mansion. Maybe two mansions. I have no clear idea of its size because the only light was from our flashlights. Just huge though. Like, really huge. As usual, my words fail me and I simply can’t explain the sheer majesty of an entire room with rocks the size of semi-trucks.

Even with our little artificial lights we could see the glimmering of the water dripping from the high walls of the cave. The room looked like it had been spray-painted with glitter. There was also man-made graffiti in places. I tried to take a picture of a rock displaying the phrase “fock you”. Yes, with the o. There were names and places and years and pictures sprayed onto several of the boulders at eye level. Which is sad that something so amazing had been defiled and made ugly.

But also kinda funny.

I mean seriously. Fock you?

Haha.

Anyway.

The floor of the mansion cavern was surprisingly flat. Muddy and wet, but flat. So I could walk around and explore without risk of injury. There were also small clusters of bats flying overhead which of course added to the ambiance.

Josh talked about how cool it would be to have the Olancho H-16 Welcome Party here.

Matteo and I agreed and said it would easily be one of the coolest things any of us had done, and imagine the jealousy of our friends out west when they heard what awesome parties those kids throw in Olancho. I mean, the acoustics would be awesome and it could have a Batman superhero theme. Josh has clearly mulled this over a few times. But then we decided that there were three serious flaws with this venue.

1. Where would be pee?
2. How would we get speakers and food down here?
3. And of course, being inebriated in a death trap cavern with no easy way out was problematic and probably against Peace Corps rule in some manual somewhere. Still fun to think about anyway.

Calixto pointed out a little passageway that he said led to some more small rooms with more cool things to see.

He was actually pointing to the upper right corner of the large room. I thought he was kidding. But Calixto started to climb the vertical boulders. He fully intended for us to follow him straight up the side of the room. So Josh went first, then me and Matteo, the other gringo Andrew, the amigo armed guard, and the cute girl and her boyfriend brought up the rear. An interesting sight we must have been.

Andrew, the girlfriend, the armed guard

We kept going through more passageways and tunnels that continue to wind higher and deeper into the cave.

With no more than a flashlight for guidance, it is a balancing act of putting your foot in a trustworthy-looking crevice and hoping that once you throw your body weight against it, you will be able to grab on to something else for balance. Just like rock climbing, in the dark.  Really it was a bit of a struggle for me at first, but then I thought about what a great upper body workout I was getting.

The passageways continued to narrow and we kept entering into smaller rooms that all 8 of us could fit in, we’d stop, make sure everyone was still there and then kept going.

Finally Calixto informed us that just a little ways more, there is one final small room with a cool rock or something. But I took one look at the hole that he was pointing to and told myself no way. No way was I going to squeeze up around and through that little one. Claustrophobia begins to set it at some point and I really couldn’t imagine whatever was beyond this particular wall was any different than what we had been seeing for an hour.

So I decided to stay back in the larger room. Matteo and Josh followed Calixto and Andrew went as well.

Which left me with the other girl and her swaggering boyfriend who elected to stay behind too. And the guard seemed to realize that both him and his giant gun wouldn’t fit through the hole at the same time. So he stayed behind.

So now we pick up where we left off from the beginning of this story. Crammed in a small dark room, the size of a handicapped bathroom stall with three total strangers, studying each other and anxiously waiting for the other four to reemerge. Oh wait I forgot my favorite detail:

A lot of people in this country treat their cell phones like portable radios with a few songs loaded onto them, just like an MP3. Whenever they feel like it, they can play a few songs at maximum volume and jam out for a bit. Well the security guard was no different and while the four of us were standing around awkwardly, he whipped out his phone and started scrolling through his tunes. Imagine my surprise when he finally selected the Roxberry tune, What is Love. I thought it was just hysterical. The sounds of Haddaway echoing off the dripping wet walls of a dark millennia-old cavern sure lightened the mood.

That’s when I told myself, if this is life here in Honduras, if this is the weekend activities of a Peace Corps volunteer, then I am never leaving. Ever. Seriously. Not until I have done every cool thing there is to do in this entire country and perhaps the surrounding ones as well.

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Matteo and I had to practically sprint to make the last bus of the day headed back to Catacamas. Out of the cave, down the mountain, past Calixto and Josh’s house, through the national park and across a river to the open field where the bus picks up. We covered it all in 40 minutes. We think we covered 10 kilometers in total today.

Breathing heavily, we grabbed the last two seats on the back of the bus. Filthy does not begin to describe what I was. All of my clothes were soaked through, my shoes were covered in cave mud, there was mud in my hair and dust in all my pores. I must have smelled rank. I had a busted knee which almost certainly meant no running for at least a week. And I was hungry and thirsty and my shoulders felt like Jell-O. Under normal circumstances I would have been cranky as all hell.

But I spent the entire bumpy dusty bus ride simply grinning ear to ear. Matteo and I were too tired to talk, but we were thinking the same thing. Seriously one of the coolest things I have ever done in my entire life. An experience that I won’t soon forget and my only regret was that I didn’t bring my really good camera.

Can’t wait to do it all over again. Maybe next weekend.

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* To any photographers out there—what is the best way to photograph the inside of a cave? I have a Nikon DSLR and a detachable flash and I would really like some advice on how to get the best shots in really really low light situations.

** I don’t think I was a klutz before I came to Honduras. But I fall a lot. The terrain here gets me every time. Gravel roads, slippery trails, I don’t know what it is. But you ask the other volunteers from Zarabanda who spent the most time on their ass during training; they’ll tell you it was I for sure.