Mexico
The following is a brief account of the 30 strong
After a two hour coach trip to Heathrow, a 16 hour flight via Amsterdam and Houston to Mexico City, a night in a hotel and a further day by bus Dany and myself along with other members of the expedition arrived in the large town of Ciudad de Valles, situated 220 miles north of Mexico City.
Sunday morning we went in search of the café "Don
Juan" to rendezvous with members of our advance party, who over the past 5
weeks had driven our 3 expedition vehicles down from the States, cleared the
expedition gear through customs (this took 21 days) set up base camp, and
started the serious business of prospecting and caving. The cafe was easily located, parked outside
was a 4x4 Chevrolet truck bearing the insignia "MEXICO 85 British Caving
Expedition, sponsored by Johnnie Walker Scotch Whiskey", everything to
plan, amazing! We entered. "Where the bloody hell have you
been", we were greeted by the soft and gentle voice of Alan Thomas who had
cunningly followed us from Priddy, "The rest of your lot are asleep out
the back", he went on. "I have had lots of adventures getting here, I
must tell you". Some time later,
after a meal and Alan's story, the Chevrolet was put through the pain barrier
along the
Tuesday morning, we drove to Tampajal, from there 3 hours
walk into the mountains gained us the
We spent the next day doing some bread and butter work,
following a young local lad through very wet and soggy jungle at high speed,
descending each shaft as he magiced them out of the undergrowth, most of the
shafts proving to be choked with rotting vegetation. All would probably go with digging but we had
not come this far to do that. We returned
to our cave home to find that a shaft shown to the others had gone to a 100m
pitch, two of them had walked back to Tlamaya for more rope and would return
later that night. It was decided that
one team would push on down the pitch the following day, while we investigated
a second draughting shaft situated nearby. This we did, and after the passing of a squeeze at the bottom of the
entrance climb by John Palmer and Debbie, both anorexic whippets! A further hour was spent enlarging it to Bob
and Dany size, this gained us a large, steeply descending fluted passage
carrying a small stream. In an alcove on
the right hand wall two brawn calcite formations closely resembling hedgehogs
gave the cave its name, Queva de la Erizo (
The others had also done well and their cave was still going at -300m. We returned to base the next day and another team took over at Las Horneos, we had had atrocious weather but a good four days caving.
Christmas was fast looming on the horizon, Alan Thomas had searched high and low in Xlitla for a cafe that would serve roast turkey and Christmas Pud on Christmas Day. He had even applied his shouting in a silly accent technique, but not even this, combined with his school teacher stern look, brought any joy. We finally had to settle for spicey chicken, assorted vegetable and sala served on Christmas Eve. Some compensation was gained in the fact that the red wine we had ordered arrived in the form of Bacardi and Coke, oh the joys of the language barrier! Dany and myself returned to the local bar at Tlamaya to carry on the Christmas Eve festivities. Christmas passed in a haze.
On the 27th December, Dany and I plus three others set off
to an area to the northeast of Xlitla, near the large town of
The following day we carried our tackle up into the surrounding hills aiming to descend the reported shafts above. We systematically worked our way through a number of these, all with the same result, all were very dry and dusty, adorned with bat shit and choked around the 50m mark. Our resident geologist, Alf Latham, weighed up the situation and declared in best scientific terms, this is a real bum area, we all agreed and returned to our truck. Our next port of call was Puerto de Animas on the main road north of Jalpan, here locals had told us that there were large caves where a river disappeared and then re-emerged on the far side of the hill. They were right, the problem was that they had been previously explored by the Americans, all the same, they were well worth the visit.
We spent the following day in the sink end, this proved to be about 1km of mega passage, well decorated, brought to a sudden end in a very stagnant sump. Before returning to base on the morrow, we visited the resurgence cave, this was a very picturesque railway tunnel carrying the main stream, opening out into a large decorated chamber. The streamway terminated 1/2km further on in a good size clear inviting sump pool. A dry flood overflow passage, explored on the way out, gave another 1 1/2km of big mud floored passage ending in a muddy chamber. This must be close to the upstream sump but no connection could be found.
We returned to base for the New Year, a group of us decided to celebrate by going to a dance advertised in Xlitla, this proved to be in a building site (the Spanish influence, I suppose!). Everybody stroved towards their desired state of drunkenness and the locals looked on in amazement at our rendering of "Auld Lang Syne" as the magic hour passed, six hours after the real English one. All was well until the return journey in the early hours, the vehicle in front of me sprung a puncture, I swerved around it and drove off the edge of the track. I sat there in amazement as the thing rocked on the edge of a rather steep drop above the valley floor many feet below. "Oh dear", said everybody and deserted the vehicles to walk back to base. The next few days were spent persuading a rogue from a Tamzunchale rescue truck company, firstly to lift our truck out of its predicament, and secondly to let us have it back. During this time our third truck had broken down leaving the expedition rather immobile although teams still managed to get out by using local buses.
With the New Years problems behind us, and two vehicles back on the road, a team of 10 were off again, this time to visit Ixtacapa, an area not far from Xlitla. There were two caves still going here, left by a team on a day trip to this area. On arrival we asked permission to use a half built hut as a shelter, this was granted. Before we had finished erecting our poly sheet, a woman appeared from the mass of spectators that had gathered and told us that she had a house we could use. As I have said before, the friendliness of Mexicans is amazing. The house was a large wooden one, just right for our needs, we accepted it gratefully. At a team discussion that evening Dany and I volunteered to go with a local guide the following day to explore the caving possibilities of the Tancuilin river gorge. This proved a major undertaking, it took us about an hour to reach the top of the gorge, we then descended 300m plus down the steep, heavily vegetated sides, at the bottom it was apparent that finding entrances would be impossible in the short time available as the gorge was so immense and dry water courses emerged from the jungle in all directions. After a quick dip in the river we lugged ourselves and our un-needed caving gear back up the gorge, arriving some hours later back at the house, hot and sweaty.
Our remaining two days here were spent shaft bashing, photographing and surveying the two going caves which were now finished, and also exploring some short, but well decorated, caves that we had found.
After our couple of days back in base we set off on what would be our last trip out into the hills. As you have probably realised, the system is to spend 4 days out and then return to base. This gives everybody the chance of going to different areas and doing a wider spectrum of the expedition work, i.e. photographing, surveying, pushing etc. The time at base camp allows for getting cleaned up, shopping, drawing of surveys, and generally relaxing between caving bouts.
Since we had last been to Los Horneos, the caves there had
been pushed to their conclusions and attention had been moved lower down the
hill to a village called
We spent our usual day shaft bashing, this paid off towards
the end of the day with the discovery of a large draughting shaft,
It was now Saturday, the 18th January, we had to have all
our kit in
While this was going on we managed to fit in a trip down
Hitchuhuatla cave, an American find near to our base camp. A 130m entrance shaft is followed by a 50m
second pitch, at the bottom of which 3km of magnificent stream passage can be
followed to a terminal muddy sump - a fine trip by any standards. Also during this period Golondrinas was
visited and descended by a few of the brave. There are problems here with locals demanding money and a guard on the
rope is well advised, I quickly volunteered for this job. The depth of the shaft does not become
totally apparent until a boulder is observed disappearing downwards for 12-14
seconds. I abseiled over the edge on a
30m rope to get some shots of the heroes on the main ropes. The walls bell out after the first 4m and are
30-35m away 25m down. I sat on the end
of the short rope and did a very careful changeover, emptied my trousers and
tried to hold myself still enough to take some snaps. A few minutes later we were treated to the
very impressive sight of thousands of swiftlets returning to their nests, they
circle in the sky above the shaft and dive bomb at high speed into the hole,
this causes a loud roaring noise which resonates around the walls. The marathon task of hauling up the special
400m ropes followed, some
A large truck and driver had been hired to transport our
gear back to
There were now about twelve of us left in Tlamaya, five of
us to catch the night bus from Xlitla to
The night ride to
The following day we left for
The final score was 20km of new passage explored and surveyed, over 100 entrances noted, the deepest cave was over 600m and most importantly a good time was had by all with no deaths, injuries or diseases.
Bob Cork