A Leap in the Dark

The last couple of days Barry and I have filled up on adventure sports: river-rafting (Class III rapids, sounded calm but was quite turbulent in places); tubing down natural water slides; and the best of the lot, caving.

We bought our ticket for the caving guide through the "Planeta Azul" extreme sports agency in San Gil, and took the bus to the nearby village where the cave is located. On the bus it started to rain. And rain. By the time we reached the village it was a downpour. Luckily the branch office of Planeta Azul was opposite the bus stop. I was hoping the rain would cancel, but caves are, alas, way underground and unaffected by water. Our young man guide, Wayeen (? I'm writing his name phonetically) met us at the office, we changed our clothes, stashed our backpacks, and sloshed through the bucketing rain and mud about four city blocks to a steep path down to the entrance of our cave.

Soon we were in the first "sala," where the bats live. I love bats. (Side note: in Palo Alto, Barry built a wooden bathouse that we nailed to the outside wall of my then-office (former garage), hoping to attract bats. No success.) Wayeen gave us a little lecture on bats, of which I don't remember much. I was more interested in the experience than information.

From the first sala, we scrambled up and down lots of ledges, to more salas, mud, and a tunnel that we had to crawl through. (I had forgotten how much fun caves are). In the last sala Wayeen pointed to a little rock bench for Barry and me to sit on, and we stayed there for awhile in the dark, in silence. I remembered the assignment my Drama professor at the University of Wales gave us: to return to class after the weekend, having found a place of complete silence. It was a trick question, of course, because no such place exists (OK, maybe in space). I realized sitting there that rarely does complete darkness exist either, except in a cave. It was totally black. No slivers of light, vague shadows, nothing.

We'd been exploring for about an hour. We clambered along some more and then reached the climax of our journey: we walked down about 20 steep steps of a ladder to a tiny platform, not much bigger than a square foot, where we were to jump into a dark pool of water. I was first. Wayeen shone his flashlight on the area where I needed to aim (outside of that area were rocks, which was not confidence-inspiring). It looked a long way down, and out. (It was 5 meters, 40 cm.)

I guess I'm one of those people who just does it. I remember jumping off an unfinished freeway ramp over Lake Washington, in Seattle, where people would hang out and swim in the summer. I walked up the side ramp to the top, stood on the ledge and just jumped. Ditto when I parachuted. Hand on wing, let go of foot, jump. This time, I said to Wayeen, "It looks far," and then, before he answered, I was midair. I must have had my eyes open when I hit water because I saw the lantern on my helmet bobbing in the beautiful blue-green water.

I loved it! I love jumping. (I also love diving, but "no se permite.") I could have done it again, it was so magical.

From there we were not far from the other end of the cavern (and by the way, a cave has one opening only; a cavern has an entrance and exit, we learned during one of Wayeen's lectures).

We hiked up and up and up steep muddy steps to the surface, the earth almost shimmering in its misty green. It looked mystical to me.

And that's what I was doing yesterday afternoon.