Cueva del Humo, Rio Camuy

On the other side of the karst window sink hole was another very large entrance 80’ W x 30’ H. Marion had gone in but hadn’t gone the right way. Both he and Brandon sat 1/4 of the way down the rather steep entrance slope on a flat area. They expected me to go and find the way. I descended the slope and came into a big room. I could here bats flying around above me. To the left, a muddy slope descended down. I went down there but saw no foot prints. I could here water flowing underground near a hole in the left wall. I climbed back up the mud slope and found an elephant trail stairway up a steep slope near the right wall. I emerged in another large room which continued as a large walking passage. The floor was occasionally sloshy mud. I met the survey group at the end of the large walking passage. I went back to check on the others and they had found the way. Pat wanted to know how far away the survey crew was from the river so I went down a smaller walking passage 7’ H x 14’ W. There were many formations on the ceiling. This passage descended further underground and opened into more large passage. 400’ ahead, I reached a rather sketchy mud climb-down. Below, the now tall canyon passage descended 100’ down 200’ of mud slope. The entire slope was steep, slick, and muddy. At the bottom was a pooled section of passage that smelled of organic debris. I climbed back up the mud slope and met Alan. We went back down and swam across the pool and climbed over a mud bank into a larger passage with a small muddy stream. We swam across to an area that looked sumpy but it really didn’t sump. There was plenty of airspace. The problem was that the logs and branches were so thick it was difficult to swim in the deep water. It reminded me of a time when Sean and I experienced through Nate Newkirk's exclamations of "Crazy" a similar situation. We swam back and went down the larger passage walking through a muddy stream. Further ahead, we swam across another pool and ascended an extremely slick, muddy slope with the aide of a previously rigged hand-line. We came to an area with deep water and slick, steep mud slopes descending both walls. It looked like a PFD would be a good idea. Since this does connect in to the largest cave system in Puerto Rico, yet unmapped, we decided not to go any further. We went back out tromping through slop mud, swimming, and walking. We checked out the other way from where we’d initially slid into the nasty water. I don’t remember what it did but it required more swimming. When we were done my torso itched like crazy. I posed for a picture in the water and routed back up the 100’ tall mud slope to where Brandon and Marion were napping. When Pat caught up with the survey crew she told us we needed to take a bath because the explorers who’d done a through trip from here to the Rio Camuy entrance had gotten some sort of skin rash; nice to know now. From here, I routed fast out of the cvae and watched the bats fly out of the entrance to eat bugs. It was raining but not hard enough to wash me off. We hiked back to the cars just before darkness set in. The cockpit karst was quite evident here. You could see large hills of limestone popping up here and there in the jungle above the pastoral landscape. Alan talked to Pauli on the way back. He’d been on a 25 hour trip in the cave without skin problems. Good news! I had a delicious coconut popcycle on the drive back. I took a cold shower to wash off back to camp. Its been raining pretty hard since we got back. We moved our tent under the shelter near the bathroom.