Bruno, Beardy, Rick Stanton
The entrance is an unassuming small hole in the wall about 5
Photo by Jim Rozzy of aragonite formations
metres below the surface. I have sworn to give away no details of the name or where it is, but today we visited what is, according to ‘Beardy’, the most stunningly decorated cave of the 2000 cave he has visited or explored to date.
We grabbed a tank each and followed Bruno in, laying a line as he went. We were to be very thankful for that line on the way out.
We followed the line in through the hole and along a few metres to a more open chamber. Looking up from there we could see the passage leads to an air space. Ascending we emerged into a small pool with smooth, metre-high walls and a large stalactite protruding down into it. We removed tanks and BCs and left them here. Some rocks at one end offered a way out and into a passage completely lined with very smooth, pale brown clay…mud. Grovelling single file we followed Bruno on hands, knees and then writhing on our fronts further down the passage, getting completely smothered in mud in the process. Holding my big wide-beam filming torch light in the hand became impossible so I gripped the strap in my teeth, mud now between my teeth also! My first sight of a formation was the one my head almost collided with. From then on thankfully I had both Rick and Beardy keeping half an eye on my every move as we squeezed ourselves through into a couple of further chambers decorated in every direction with stunning formations of aragonite. There was white fairy floss, flowers, spirals, tubes, filaments growing and twisting an various directions, and all of white aragonite growing slowly over hundreds of years. You can’t help feel seriously out of place sitting, filthy with mud surrounded by these stunning white formations.
Rick Stanton and Beardy (background) checking water clarity
If you can manage to look past the formations, the fossils of beings buried millions of years ago pattern the rock walls they grow from.
After marvelling for a while we wriggle back out and to the pool we entered from. As we jump in, one by one, our muddied bodies turn the water brown. Now with zero visibility we can no longer see the way out and must head down with one hand forming a tight circle with fingers and thumb around that guideline laid on the way in. By the bottom of that chimney the water clears again and you can see the bright blue of the exit back into open ocean…
This was just one of the places we visited on a day spent looking at the entrances to some of the caves and exploring a few dry caves. We also stopped to look at the entrance to Bel Torente, the system Rick and Toddy are keen to push further and where the suspected remipede was spotted. Bad news – the outflow of fresh water is still strong. Good news – it is only slightly discoloured. Fingers remain crossed. See the video and photos.
Thanks for the beautiful description of your trip into the cave – it’s almost like being there myself, I even got a bit claustrophobic reading how you had to push yourself through the cave!
I was wondering what the water temperature is? And is the temperature significantly different in the ocean before you enter the cave compared to within the cave?
Thanks again for sharing your adventures it’s really great!
Hi,
Thanks very much.
The water temperature here at the moment in the ocean is a warm, blue 24 degrees C…but the freshwater in the caves and flowing into the ocean is closer to 16 degrees.
Where freshwater sits on top of a layer of salt, it is normal here to have clear warm blue water beneath and clear green water above.
There’ll be a note to that in my next blog post.