What’s it like to explore caves in Mexico? Here’s a story from 2006 that gives you an authentic answer—without pulling any punches.
While most people love to spend Semana Santa at the beach, members of Zotz—then Guadalajara’s only club dedicated to cave exploration—packed up their ropes, cable ladders, and helmets and headed for the pine-covered hills of Dos Aguas in the neighboring state of Michoacán. Zotz means bat in Mayan, and indeed, one would have to be a bit batty to vacation in Dos Aguas, a place truly in the middle of nowhere. It lies about 100 kilometers southeast of Colima City and is reachable only via chokingly dusty dirt roads that zigzag up and down mountains around 2,500 meters high.
After eight hours of torturous driving, the Zotz delegation set up camp among the tall pines and immediately applied themselves to their favorite occupation: squeezing through narrow, mud-filled tubes only a foot high or dangling from ropes over black pits with no bottom in sight.
Canadian geologist and Zotz member Chris Lloyd, a long-time resident of Zapopan, told his fellow adventurers there were over 40 known caves in the Dos Aguas area, the most notable being La Cueva del Río Durazno, which runs more than three kilometers long. Its appeal, Chris enthused, could be summed up in three words: big, wet and muddy.
“One of the nine drops where you need to use a rope lands you right in the middle of an ice-cold underground lake,” Chris said. “You have to disconnect in the water and swim for your life.”
Of course, this was exactly the kind of challenge Chris enjoys, having taken part in at least one major underground expedition every year for the past 17 years.
As for me, this was my first visit to Dos Aguas, and I asked to see a cave known more for beauty than for mud.
Sergi Gómez, who had traveled from Catalonia to this little-known corner of Michoacán, looked at me as if I were daft. “If that’s what you’re looking for, you ought to visit La Cueva de la Luna Llena (The Cave of the Full Moon), which we found just two days ago.”
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