Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Team Close to Victory! Today we have the pleasure of bringing you some excellent news regarding the advance of the expedition. We found a new hidden, dry passage which seems to lead to the San Andrés System. The good news is that this bring us to only 200 meters away from joining the two systems, and achieving the goal of this expedition! Don't miss this exciting news. It might happen at any moment. Expect a full update on these advances tomorrow! Don't change the channel. We'll be right back.

Frijoles and Cave Monsters
Pete and I set off to explore Cueva Del Aire, and look for other caves in the area, accompanied by Oyvind who wanted to take some photos of the new cave. We arrived at our base camp (a spare room in the local doctor's house), were fed by Odi, his wife, and set off for an evening trip.

We decided to explore and survey in and photograph out; I find this works well as photographers are usually as keen to have a beer as the next man and will therefore work much faster if they are loosing drinking time!

Cueva del Aire lived up to all our earlier expectations and we were soon in full flow. It proved to be a well decorated fossil system with walking sized passages. After surveying 350M, and the cave still going and draughting well, we turned around in order to appease the artistic lust of our photographer and return to our Host before he went to bed.

The next morning we went walking. I started to miss Maru, the muchacha who had accompanied me on my previous visit, almost straight away. We were told about four caves in the area in machine gun Spanish. All I got was … 4 caves…..Cueve del Aire…. Near a road …. Water coming out… no guides available. Ah well, at least we knew there was something to look for! After combing the hillside below Cueva del Aire, we found a much more impressive entrance to a resurgence called Cueva Secan.

We surveyed the first 60M of this and confirmed that it was a good lead and continued with our walk. Back in town we noticed lots of Toteneca women scooping water out of the fountain in the square with plastic ½ bottles tied onto poles. At first we wondered if this water had some special significance, be we soon learned that there is a real problem with the water supply in the town and the locals would spend a huge amount of effort to get a bucket of water. We spent the afternoon looking around the edge of a large (3X1km) enclosed depression; we found one gated resurgence, again with many people filling containers and carrying the water up the hill.

After supper, we decided to go and have a more detailed look at Cueva Secan. We surveyed 280M and took a dozen or so photos in this well decorated resurgence in a short (2 ½ hour) trip. The cave proved to be full of life, with bats in the air, crayfish in the water and some monstrous arachnids on the walls.

Most people are familiar with spiders and scorpions as the two classes of arachnid, and we, as cavers were also familiar with amblipygids, another class. But in this cave lived another, which could best be described as a cave monster. It had scorpion like claws and legs, a body like an amblipygid (or spider), but longer and thinner, powerful looking legs and a long thin hair-like tail, which seemed to say "danger highly toxic". This was a creature with which I was completely unfamiliar and consequently treated with the greatest of respect. I have heard amblipygids referred to as whip scorpions, so I think this dangerous looking creature is one of those.

If anyone is familiar with these, please let me know.