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| Barbados (South Caribbean) |
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 Luckily we switched that at the last minute to "Hiking and Cave Adventure" tour. That trip was FANTASTIC!!! Before the hike and underground cave we went snorkeling at the shipwreck. That was really cool too. We took a cab over to the place where they had shipwrecks. First we laid on the beach, which was so beautiful: pure white sand and clear blue aquamarine water. Our snorkeling adventure was incredible. There were actually four boats shipwrecked: a french tugboat, a tour boat and two other boats I didn't recognize. The boats were really shallow so we didn't need to scuba dive, they were about 30 to 50 feet of water. It was a strange feeling to see the boats, since they looked like ghosts. Looking at the boats underwater and thinking about the tragedy that occurred. Just seeing a boat, that normally would be functioning, being underwater was a site to see. The fish were moving in and out of the windows, portholes, and other areas of the boat. The fish were friendly and were swimming around me the entire snorkeling. I think they wanted food. The cave exploration was incredible. Well, first we did a hike that turned out to be more fun than what I expected. I though it was great that it was a natural trail, not like the easy-to-walk, paved and lighted trails in the U.S.
.jpg "Barbados") Barbados Britney chose this trip because she likes the rain forest, but it turned out not to be a rainforest, since they're usually found in volcanic islands. Barbados is actually a giant coral reef that surfaced hundreds of thousands of years ago. After hiking for 40 minutes through the forest, we reached the spot where the cave was. We had to repel down to the mouth of the cave. While we were waiting for more people to climb down, we started wondering how long the cave exploration was going to take. We all estimated that it would take no more than fifteen minutes.
I also thought this was a small tour inside the cave, and that we were going to the more "tourist-friendly" Harrison's Cave, which is one of the most popular spots in the island. We saw a bunch of pictures and postcards for this cave in the Barbados' port.
This was, however, a different cave. We walked in the cave and you couldn't walk straight since it was too small. Then we started climbing down the cave until we got into a spot where the cave was really big and the cave's ceiling was at least 15 feet tall.
We kept walking and passed a couple of tunnels; I started to count and keep track of our direction in case we got lost. The cave didn't have any lighting of course besides the flash lights coming from our helmets. Our hope to get to a more "tourist-friendly" path inside the cave began to fade away at this point. Everyone in our group had seen pictures of Harrison's cave and I think everyone thought that was the cave we were going to visit.
By this time in our cave we were completely walking on water until we reached a point were you had to literally crawl in the water-covered floor. There go my tennis shoes I thought. This is one of the reasons I had to leave my digital camera out of the cave. This was unfortunate, since I miss a lot of great shots.
We kept going on and on for like half an hour. The cave was full of stalactites that would hit your helmet if you were not careful enough. The tip of the stalactites had always a little drop of water hanging down from them. I knew this is how stalactites were formed but I've never seen it up close.
We reached a point where our guide gave us a decision to make. We could either go back at that point or keep going through a tougher trail which was smaller and with a lot of water. I looked back and I saw everyone's un-enthusiastic faces, when suddenly I heard Britney yelling "let's do it" out loud. Everyone agreed to keep going almost by inertia.
The first step was to crawl through a tiny opening inside the cave. We had to do it by crawling "army style". Then we went through water that was so deep that I had to swim to go through it. Then we climbed up trough a series of natural little pools until we reached a big wall. There was a series of tunnels after the wall but our guide told us that they were too small (for us).
The guide then asked us to turn off our helmet lights and we realized how dark the cave really was and that there was no way I gould get out of there without a lantern and our guides. We came back the same way but it felt twice as fast. Britney told me "I feel like Gollum" climbing down the rocks in a cave and I thought this was exactly the same experience narrated in a much better way in Tolkien's book "The Hobbit            |
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