Draughts Draughts in caves can arise from a number of different sources, but the most common are: 1) Flowing water, particularly waterfalls will pull air with them and cause draughts, some of which can be fairly strong. These are often fairly localised. 2) Big chambers act as a reservoir of air at a given barometric pressure. If the surface pressure changes, the pressure will equalise, causing a draught. 3) Two or more entrances, particularly at different heights, will cause a draught as there will be pressure and temperature differences between them; the greater the height difference, the greater the draught. One thing draughts all have in common, is that they excite cavers. Cave explorers will generally be more interested in following a draught than anything else when pushing a new cave.A draught like the one in Cueva Del Aire could represent a height difference of 200M or more, or indicate the presence of a major underground river, or a large volume of subterranean passage. Watch Jonathan's status update here: This video requires the QuickTime Plugin to be viewed.

The Big Blow-out
I decided to go to visit a new area in Totonaca territory, to follow up some comments we had heard when in San Miguel last year, to assist me I kidnapped Maru, one of the Mexicans from Simplemente.

The bus journey there was a comedy of errors, starting with no bus, graduating to a bus that would drop us off 9 km short, to a bus that was broken-down, a 5 km walk and finally a lift from the Police. The town was however, beautiful with a ceramic-faced church and houses in pastel colours.

A busride through the hills around Cuetzalan offers splendid photo-opportunities.

Maru asked the locals about food, as there were no visible restaurants or cafes, and we were told to go to a blue house behind the church. The proprietress, Odi, was an excellent hostess and produced good food and told us we could stay there for $25 per night (about £1.60). We asked about caves and were told that there was a cave 10 minutes walk away called Cueva del Aire, which people had gone a long way into, but nobody had found the end.

Off we trotted, with an optimistic spring in our stride, down the hill towards what I was expecting to be an impressive cave entrance.

After 5 minutes our guide said “here it is”. I looked around, but could not see a cave anywhere. I looked at Maru and she, equally confused asked where the cave was. “There” he said, pointing to a little rabbit hole by our feet. I started to feel that sense of crushing disappointment; we had heard so much about this cave, and there it was, a tiny little hole! I bent down to have a look inside, and my hat blew off!

	Typical stream inside a cave.

There was a very powerful draught blowing out of the entrance; all feeling of disappointment was instantly replaced by mounting excitement as I dived into my rucksack to grab a torch. After squeezing for a body-length through the entrance, I popped into a roomy walking passage and raced off into the cave.

There were plenty of indications of locals having visited the site, the usual names on the walls and footprints. In addition it soon became apparent that the cave had been visited by a series of classics scholars; they had learned their caving skills by reading about Theseus and the Minator. Areadnie’s threads of all colours and thickness lead off through some boulders into the depths of the system.

Click on the panorama above to open a full-screen versio in a new browser window (opens in a 900x550 window). Click here if your browser does not open new windows.

After about 150M I thought about Maru, abandoned to the mercies of the sunlight (Yuck!) and decided, reluctantly, to abandon my labyrinth and return to the surface. On our way back to Cuetzalan we were regaled by numerous tails of caves in the area, in particular by Flavio Campos, and will be back soon to explore Cueva Del Aire and investigate these other leads.

Jonathan