One day I met a man who casually mentioned a “bottomless pit” somewhere around a small town called La Estrella, 35 kilometers south of Tuxpan.
Naturally my caver friends and I couldn’t resist bottoming yet another bottomless pit, so off we went to La Estrella, where we found an aerial tramway transporting iron ore in giant buckets. “El Pozo sin Fondo?” exclaimed a local man. “Just follow the tramway to a place called Fortín ... and be careful you don´t fall in that pit; it has no bottom, you know.”
This turned out to be a pitiful example of a bottomless pit because – up close to the edge – we could easily see the bottom a mere 28 meters below. We rappelled down and found the cave didn’t lead anywhere, but did have beautiful flowstone on the walls, which led us to ask Don Rafael, the owner of a nearby puesto de refrescos, if there were any other caves in the area. “¿Cuevas?” he said, “pos sí, there’s a big one down by the river.”
A few weeks later we were back. “Don Rafael, remember that cave-near-a-river you told us about? Think we could find it if you give us some directions?”
“Nope.”
“Er, any chance you could show us where it is?”
“Sure, anytime.”
“Oh ... well, er, how about today?”
“Busy today.”
“Tomorrow, then?”
“Busy tomorrow, también”
Since Don Rafael himself had told us that one could easily spend all day wandering inside that cave, none of us was ready to give up so easily. After another hour of chit-chat with a lunch break in between we finally talked him into “taking us partway ...”
The river in question is the Pihuamo, reachable after a two-hour brisk hike down into a wide, lonely canyon said to be the home of animales de uña: pumas, mountain lions, etc. Shade trees dot the shallow river which sometimes cuts through beautiful, massive chunks of limestone.Although the heat was stifling and it felt like our brains were frying, we fairly flew down the hillside and headed upriver. The entrance to Don Rafa’s cave turned out to be small and easy-to-miss, which was a bit of a let-down until we stepped inside ...
It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a cave in Jalisco anything like this: a smooth borehole 4-5 meters in diameter that reminded us of a subway tunnel. Near the entrance, the passage was covered with a thick layer of dried mud, top to bottom. The floor was cracked into a million little pieces the color of fudge and a few steps ahead stalactite “hands” reached down from the ceiling. We decided to call this place La Cueva Chocolate.
Because we had taken Don Rafa away from his work (naturally, he hadn’t stopped at halfway), we gave ourselves only ten minutes to see what we could see. Just a few steps away we came upon a high-ceilinged room and so many beautiful stalactites that we knew without a doubt this cave was special.
At one point, Luis Rojas stepped into a side passage and WHAP! suddenly flew backward, falling to the floor. I figured he had walked right into a low ceiling, but it turned out he had been hit head-on by a very large bat in a very big hurry and obviously not echo-locating.
Ten delightful minutes in the cave were followed by a long, hot, dusty trek back up the hill and a quick departure for a place called Fatima Bridge, which we heard might be a good spot to camp.
The following weekend Luis Rojas and I were back in the area with the intention of camping at Chocolate Cave. Don Rafa had promised to join us there for breakfast and a tour of the cave, inside of which he had never dared to venture.
At the riverside we filled our canteens with fresh spring water and then stored our backpacks inside the cave entrance. Soon we were in the side passage where Rojas had been smacked by a bat. This petered out after about 20 meters, but inside we came upon a Chinche Hocicona, a two-inch-long bloodsucking “bedbug” that carries Chagas disease. Further on we found two ferocious-looking Arañas Lobo (Wolf Spiders) whose bite is said to cause painful swelling.
Leaving behind this delightful menagerie, we returned to the main passage which led us to several rooms bristling with countless, shimmering brown stalactites. Many of these were within arm’s reach and we were amazed not to find any of them broken.
Not far along we gazed up at a balcony which was obviously home to a good-sized colony of bats. The next rooms we came to were either filled with breakdown or great heaps of sand. In one place we found deposits of fine black dust which we proved – with the help of a magnet – to be powdered iron, probably washed into the cave from the mine.
After 300 meters or so, we stood at the opening to a very large room filled with lots of chunky breakdown. We both stopped and looked at each other: “Do you hear what I hear?”
The sound reaching our ears was so much like the voices of people laughing, shouting and playing in a swimming pool, that we really expected to find a balneario at the other end of the room. We actually set out looking for these people whom we named The Water Sprites, but what we found were two streams of water on both side of the room, each heading off in the opposite direction, apparently fed by a spring rising up from beneath the breakdown. Were our “voices” generated by the gurgling stream on the right or were they real voices floating above the wider “river” heading off to the left? We still don’t know.
As we hadn’t come prepared for water sports and the hour was late, we headed back to the entrance area which, unlike the slope outside, was nice and flat. So we decided to pitch our tents right here by tying them to a couple of conveniently located stalactites on the low ceiling. Tents inside a cave? With vampire bats fluttering by at regular intervals (not to mention the other critters we had seen), we figured it would be a good idea. Luis Rojas, who had been suffering from insomnia for weeks, finally got a good sleep which was suddenly interrupted in what seemed like the middle of the night ...
“ANYBODY IN THERE?” came a loud voice booming through the cave. Who in the world could that be? We prudently declined to respond and a minute later heard “the voice” again, this time right outside our tents: “Here I am for my tour ... let’s go!”
The voice was Don Rafa’s. I reached for my flashlight and looked at my watch. It was 6:30 AM! Nevertheless, there was Don Rafael smiling at us and opening a big thermos full of hot te de canela (cinnamon tea). My body was aching for several hours more sleep, so I count myself lucky that Rojas – who had slept much better than I – crawled out of his tent, partook of the “coffee” and took Don Rafa on an (all-too-short) tour of the cave.
As we tromped back up the steep slope to our car, carrying our tents and camping gear on our backs, Don Rafa regaled us with tales of “plenty more caves” in the area south of Tuxpan. “There are trout swimming around in one and monos (figurines) in another. “Say no more, Don Rafa,” I replied. “We’ll be back!”