The town of Pihuamo, Jalisco, is located 150 kilometers south of Guadalajara. “Somewhere near Pihuamo there’s an iron mine,” we had been told, “and along the road to that iron mine there is a bottomless pit.”
Cavers love bottomless pits, if only for the fun of rappelling down them and a few minutes later shouting: “Hey, I’m at the bottom already. You call this deep?”
So off we drove to Pihuamo, where we had no problem finding the road to the iron mine, because alongside it is a very high and impressive teleferico (aerial tramway) transporting 650 containers brimming with iron through the air.
“Do you know el pozo sin fondo?” we queried a local shopkeeper.
His eyes lit up.”Mira no más” You have heard about our bottomless pit way up there al otro lado (in the United States)?”
“Yes, indeed,” I replied.
“Okay amigo, bienvenido and drive up the road toward the mine, until you come to a pueblito called Fortín and there you will find the now internationally famous pozo.”
Fortín (population of 10) was marked by a little shop selling refrescos. We asked for cold drinks and sat down with the owner, Don Rafael.
“El Pozo sin Fondo is back down the road a bit, next to a big pile of garbage,” he told us.
“Ah, the local dump,” I thought. “What else would people do with a bottomless pit?”
We found the dump without a problem and my wife Susy walked up to the edge of the hole, which was about four meters in diameter. “I can see the bottom from here,” she complained. “Who are they kidding?”
Hoping to find an extensive cave system down below, we rigged the pit for rappelling.
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