A Perfect Last Day in PR (until August…)


5/30/12 
I wasn’t expecting much from our Hiking and Caving trip in Utuado, with Batey Zipline Adventures.  Originally, Rachel had wanted to go cave tubing on the Tanama River.  However, due to the difficulty of finding a cost effective, English speaking tour company that offered such tours, we ended up opting to go with Batey, even though they take a small row boat through the tunnel cave instead of inner tubes.  The tour fit into our budget and included 5 caves on a 3-4 hour hike. 

So, no, I wasn’t expecting a lot.  I went on the tour after 3 days spent hiking in El Yunque; I figured the hiking wouldn’t be exciting, and I feared the caves would be small caverns rather than extensive caves. 

It’s more than fair to say my expectations were exceeded.  Our guide was great, the tour was personal (just the 5 of us, the guide, and his cousin), the hiking was fun, the caves were cool, the weather was perfect, and the company was great.

I don’t have many pictures of the day, for two reasons.
1) Caves don’t really photograph well (especially with my un-professional camera); they tend to just look like over-exposed rock.
2) For much of the tour, we were in or very near water, and my camera is not waterproof.  I didn’t want to risk anything. 

So instead of pictures, I’ll just describe (to the best of my ability) my two favorite parts of the tour. 

First, Cueva Hueco.  This was the fourth cave we toured, and was by far my favorite.  The cave is a tunnel through the mountain side.  During the rainy season, it is used as a hurricane shelter.  Before the local farmers built the suspension bridge over the canyon, it was the only (quick) way to get from one side of the mountain to the other.  (Don’t ask me how a tunnel through a hillside and a bridge over a valley get you to the same place…but that’s what our guide told us.)  The cave is not lit, of course, so we turned on our head lamps (supplied by Batey Tours), and entered.  The passage was not tiny—we never had to crawl or turn sideways—but we did have to duck, and at one point our guide told us to hold our backpacks in front of us to ease through more easily.  I felt like I was on a real cave adventure (something I have always wanted to do). 

In the middle of the cave, we stopped, and all of us took a seat on the dry cave floor.  Our guide, Paul, explained something interesting and historical (I can’t remember exactly what at the moment, but it was surely both interesting and historical).  On our way out of the cave, Paul stopped and played the “drums” for us.  The formations hanging on the cave wall are hollow, and each have a different pitch when struck.  It made the coolest sound; I wish I had a video, or even a picture.  (Rachel took a video.  I’ve no idea whether it turned out or not.) 

So that was Cueva Hueco (which translates to “Hollow Cave,” in case you’re wondering.) 

My other favorite moment was simply walking upstream through the Tanama River.  It felt like the set of some beautiful, tropical movie.  The striking limestone walls of the canyon, the brilliant green foliage, the bright blue sky, and the emerald green water of the river combined to form a surreal vision I hope I always remember.

Most of my pictures didn’t do the scene justice, but these two come closest.  



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cambodia: Reflections and Highlights

Image
I was really excited to visit Cambodia for a few days and hit up Angkor Wat and the other temples in the area.  Cambodia felt like my kind of adventure--and I can’t even really say why.  But I was excited.  I was excited for our hotel there--a full-out boutique hotel (not a hostel), with AC, a swimming pool, breakfast included, and airport pick-up for free--which cost us a scant $20 per night.  And we’d read about a lot of great tours we could take with local guides.  Flying in and flying out, this leg of the trip would be a breeze, and hopefully everything would be as cheap as the hotel.   The Mango Rain Boutique Hotel Our flight to Cambodia was unlike any other I’ve ever been on.  There were only about 20 of us on the flight--which would not have been strange, except it was, because we were on a full-size plane that could have seated 200.  The 20 of us were mostly grouped together towards the back of the plane.  Second impressive thing was that as soon as the plane got to al
Read more

DI Globals 2016: A Tale of Two Teams

Image
For the past 3 years, I have acted as a team manager for Destination Imagination at my school in Guatemala, and each year, my team has earned a trip to Global Finals in Knoxville, Tennessee.  This school year, I was blessed to manage the exact same team I had last year—the Aguaguates, the most wonderful group of kids any DI team manager could wish for.  This group, all 7 th graders this year, has everything needed to not only excel at DI, but also make a team manager’s job almost unnecessary.  They have amazing team chemistry, and they understand the importance of teamwork.  They’re crazy creative and hilarious and amazing actors when they get on stage.  They push themselves to improve their performances.  They know what they need to get done for DI, and they create their own practice schedules.  In short, they are a DI dream team, not to mention really, really great people .  This year though, I took one look at the school calendar and decided that if the team qualified for Glob
Read more

Yearly Update: The Journey to 30

Image
Over a year has passed since my last “update.”  And the year I was 29, despite the fact that I lived close to home rather than abroad, was anything but boring, so there’s no real reason for the lack of blog posts.   The year I was 29, I survived what may have been my most difficult year of teaching yet.  Many overseas teachers say, “Teaching in the States is so much different than teaching abroad.  You’ll see.  That’s why I went overseas; I’d never go back to teaching in the States.  It’s just...too much.”  Well, they’re not wrong.  I admit, I thought that with five years teaching experience under my belt, my first year in the US, my first year at the high school level, would go rather smoothly.  While in a sense it did (no concerns about the quality of my work from administration or complaints from parents), it was mentally and emotionally very taxing.  Even this year, my 2nd back in the States, I’m still adjusting to and coming to terms with the fact that as a US teacher, I wil
Read more