Into the hot, sweaty, bowels of the Earth

Tags

Caves, Mexico, Outdoors, Travel

Never has abundant fresh oxygen tasted so sweet. Never has the often underappreciated ability to stand upright been given such gratitude. Never has a laundromat been so craved. This was how we looked as we emerged from Las Grutas de Calchetok (the Calchetok caves)

 filthy, sweaty, and satisfied (and in Brylee’s case unintentionally breasty).

As we awoke that morning planning to venture into the bowels of the earth we had no idea just what an undertaking lay ahead of us. Firstly a scramble through the seething streets of Mérida as the (not overly petite) populous swarmed around us, many queries later we arrived at the collectivo stop. One constantly frustrating aspect of traveling in Mexico is that when we withdraw cash it is always given to us in huge denominations so there we were trying to buy bus tickets with a $500 peso note – basically like trying to go to the movies with $500, picture the look your friendly local teenager behind the counter would give you. “Don’t worry” said the driver “you pay me now and I’ll give you the change at the end”. The people of Mexico have proven to be on the whole very trustworthy with regards to money so we innocently handed over all our money for the day and jumped in. After all, nothing could possibly go wrong with heading to an unknown destination with no other money on us right? Right. He totally gave us our change back as we got off – you should really stop being so cynical. Our next step was slightly more challenging however. Everyone has started saying to us how good our Spanish must be by now, let’s clarify this right here. It is not. It is appalling. On a good day, if the other person speaks slowly, doesn’t have a broad accent, and the wind is blowing in the right direction we may be able to more or less get the gist of what they are saying. Maybe. Speaking back is a whole other saga. So up we rocked, needing to catch a rickshaw-type contraption, naturally having forgotten the name of where we wanted to go but hoping that saying “the caves” in mangled Spanish may get us somewhere. Well the first guy appeared  to understand but asked for what seemed like a high price, the second guy talked a lot and waved his arms then offered to take us for double what the original guy said. Back to man one and after some negotiation we worked him down, feeling pretty chuffed we were off and bouncing along the road. A few kms down we passed a sign saying “las grutas” (the caves). As we sped past we sent confused looks backwards

“Isn’t that the caves?”

“No, we’re going to another one”

“Ok” putt putt putt along, and stop. Big smiles and thanks – then Brylee took a look at where we were.

“This is a ruin”

“Yes”

“Not caves”

“Yes”

“But we asked to go to the caves”

“Oh, you want to go to the caves?”

“….yes”

Now our Spanish may be bad but we had said the word caves many times, he had also said caves, then there was that discussion around the previous caves, so we still weren’t clear why we were at ruins.

“Should we go back to the other caves?”

“No the ones you want are more beautiful” cue description that seemed to centre on crawling and getting dirty and uncertainty that this was what we wanted, “Yes! Yes this is what we’re after!!” Extensive explanation of how far it is. Ah. Here we go, you need more money. Naturally. Prices were renegotiated suddenly our driver was very clear on where to take us. And to be fair, it was a hell of a long way on a bumpy old road so we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that we had a language breakdown. Either way – finally we arrived!

With our guide we came to the entranceway, it was explained to us that there were 3 entrances and unnumbered tunnels and pathways, many still undiscovered.

Our guide told us of a few fool groups who had gone in without a guide – he was pretty sure that no one had ever died but many had been lost for days, some without light, and several had gone mad. Already mad enough for our liking we stuck close to our guide, took one last look at the light

and with looks of supreme confidence

we entered the caves.

Calchetok was used as an underground refuge by the local Mayan people during the Spanish conquest and it is filled with Mayan artefacts, ceremonial spaces, and even a graveyard. As we entered we casually strolled past crystal stalactites and stalagmites

discovered some fools’ gold

and perused Mayan tools such as this water collector

But the easy road did not last long and finally it was time to squeeze, wiggle, and sweat our way into the tunnels. Hearts pounding we turned on our headlights and crawled.

We discovered many amazing sights – most of which our tiny camera (the only one we could crawl with) could not capture so no pictures of sacrificial spaces, rocks that look like Jaguars and giant penises, or fossilised waterfalls for you – just take our word for it that they were spectacular. Our camera did manage to capture one of the many huge (we’re talking at least car-sized some of them) crystals

as well as the “offerings area” (a.k.a. penis field)  in the ceremonial space so win for us.

There seems to be a lot of penis love in Mayan culture.

What this adventure was really about though was the 80 metre descent in pure, sweltering blackness. Just another day at the travelling office.

A particular favourite for us was the birth canal.

It would appear that these babies enter the womb via ropes.

Now the birth canal is likely called this due to the tiny tiny space you crawl through but we’re sure that at least part of the name also come from the straining, grunting sounds you make as you wiggle along on your belly.

Another treat were the mudslides, out of control deranged descents down rock faces, whoop whoop! 

There’s no other feeling quite like being eaten by rock – there she goes!

 

Near the end of our creeping we were standing in a huge ceremonial space. Our guide explained to us that we had to options for exit – along the main path or through the secret passage. “Secret passage! Secret passage!” we naturally cried.

The secret passage

Now to truly understand this photos you need to picture Mikey.

There he is, not exactly the widest of men. Now picture a space so small that his body is touching rock on 3 sides and barely scraping past the fourth, this is the secret passage. Apparently it was used by the Mayans as an escape route, we can only hope that they had advanced warning, something like 4 hours. If an enemy had been hot on our heels we would have been discovered all trussed up in a convenient rock trap attempting an inch by inch escape.

In the end escape was achieved and we ascended again into the sweet, sweet daylight. Hot, sweaty, and braced for some very strange looks as we made our way back.