Cueva de Hector

The entrance was completely shrouded by jungle and a good 30’ above the trail. Everyone else S’d up to it but I climbed straight up taking a more direct route. I traversed a ledge and was standing in a large entrance 20’ W x 18’ H. Many formations, large rocks, and interesting passage shapes made this a quite scenic entrance. We later discovered some Taino petroglyphs in the entrance area as well. The wide, decorated passage continued as a stoop walk and opened into heavily decorated standing passage and then a decent sized standing room with old gray formations all over the walls. Another 30 feet of stoop walk / walking passage led into a huge room 35 – 50 feet high and 30’ wide. It continued ahead for about 100’. When I first entered this room alone I heard a strange animal noise. I also heard movement and was expecting to see some sort of animal ahead. The floor was very soft. I quickly realized there were many large fruit bats flying around in the room and the floor was heavily covered in 1/2+ feet of guano. It was soft, sometimes squishy, and sometimes like very organic dirt. The sound of their wings was really neat! They were very on edge flying all over whenever you got within 20 feet of them. The ceiling was pitted and blotched with large splotches of guano. The bats were clustered in groups. I occupied myself trying to take pictures of the clustered and flying bats. I was having a good time shining my bright light around, tromping up and down mounds of guano, and snapping pictures. I begin down a passage on the right and was still trying to get bat-in-flight pictures when I heard my name. Brandon was no longer needed to survey and had come to join me. We took some pictures and continued down the 10 – 15’ wide 10-20’ high, decorated, walking passage which led to E2, a forested window in a bluff wall. I later went back to the big room and pushed a crawl in the back of it. My pads squished through the muddy guano. After about 10’ I emerged in a small room about 10’ in diameter with some formations. I helped Alan with some pictures and took some pictures of the surveying crew before taking Marion’s spot measuring tape to finish the right passage to E2. It took 3 shots. I posed for a couple more pictures and we headed back to the entrance. The cave taped out at 661’ with a vertical extent of around 50’. It was a really nice cave with nice walking passage, a big room, formations, and some cool cave life. While inside, I also took close-ups of a bat and an amblypigid. Back at the entrance, Alan showed me a small termite tunnel along the wall traveling into the cave. Brandon noticed a face carved into the wall and Alan took photos of it and 3 others which were later discovered. I climbed back down the steep slope to my food bag and chowed down. I then ascended up again to wait on the group. It was raining again. It had rained often on all day but it was warm enough outside that the rain was refreshing. The cave temperature was 71.8 degrees F. To Cueva Yummy Yammy