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"Yeah, I'll come along if its going to be fairly easy", volunteered Aitch who was on a rest day.
We chucked an abseil
rope and some prussiking gear in a rucksack, and after a last cup of
tea, set off. The walk down the road was un-eventful, with only a brief
stop to buy ice creams from a guy who'd converted his pickup into an
ice cream van by simply turning a fridge on its side and lashing it
to the back. We eventually reached the shaft at eleven o'clock, within an hour of leaving Cuetzalan, and I set about rigging a route down. I decided to avoid the most obvious route down as two years earlier, an attempt to drop the shaft by this route had to be aborted when one of the team abseiled into a wasps nest. The only alternative, a line down a gulley on the opposite side wasn't much better, the resident giant spiders hiding behind all the belay points and leaping out at you just as you were about to tie the rope off. The pitch itself was only about twenty metres and ended in a mud choke with no way on. Returning to Aitch who was busy sunbathing on the surface. I decided to take a quick look at a less likely looking hole nearby. A short 5m drop led to a short crawl with a howling draft blowing out of it. The crawl led into a small chamber with a rift leading off to one side and the source of the draft. I set off down the rift, eagerly anticipating caverns measureless to man. However, it was not to be, the rift got narrower and narrower and I was eventually forced to turn round at a nine inch slot which dropped down to a streamway in an equally narrow passage. The draft was even stronger here but any chance of pushing further would only be possible with five or six pounds of gelignite. Back on surface, we decided to have a quick scout down the valley, to see if there were any more holes before heading back to Cuetzalan. We only walked fifty or so metres and found another shaft, the valley was full of them. The next two hours was spent abseiling shaft after shaft, hoping for the elusive lead. Unfortunately, all the shafts ended in boulder fill, a fact made even more frustrating by the howling draft which could be felt at the bottom of each one. Eventually, we decided to call it a day, as it was getting late in the afternoon and the valley was getting more overgrown making it impossible to spot any more entrances. We had also travelled three kilometre and dropped abut three hundred metres in altitude since the first shaft. Instead of retraciing our steps we decided to carry on down to the villag of Tepetzala in the hope of lift back to Cuetzalan. On our arrival in the village it became immediatey obvious that we weren't going to get a lift, and we discussed alternatives while we had a well deserved rest.
(any Eldon members reading this will immediately spot the similarity of the developing scenario with that of a typical Eldon trip). The top of the waterfall led to more jungle and I began to keep my eye open for a suitable bivi. All of a sudden we popped out in a maize field, scaring the life out of the farmer tending his crop. He obviously wasn't expeecting two wild eyed, machete wielding giants to appear from that direction. "Santiago?"
I gasped.
Reluctantly, we set off up the road at a steady pace, the burning sun and steep climbs begining to exact their toll. As we walked we discussed the viability of stopping the oncoming traffic and asking them to turn round and take us back to Cuetzalan. "You've been
trained to stop cars" I pointed out to Aitch. Just then a pickup
truck careered round the corner behind us and screeched to a halt. Our
luck was in, and we dived into the back, much to the annoyance of the
chickens already crammed in there. For the next half an hour we held
on for grim life, fighting a battle with the chickens for space. The
truck hammered down the road, swerving from side to side, with numerous
expletives and insane clucking emanating from the back. The driver obviously
having had his fill of Aguardiente before setting off, made sure the
way ahead was clear by simply driving straight at anyone coming the
other way - Defensive driving, the best form of defence being attack.
"Same again
tomorrow, Aitch?" But we were in luck, it was raining. Paz Vale
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A
few days earlier, one of the locals in Cuetzalan told us that the town
of Santiago was only twenty minutes walk by road from Tepetzala and
was well serviced by the local collectivo. As neither of us fancied
the long slog back the way we'd come we decided to check it out. One
hour later as I wedged my machete in a crack half way up a dry waterfall,
I considered the reliability of this information. The road had long
since petered out into a criss cross of overgrown paths and these had
eventually disapeared completely. Whats more it was now half past five
and we only had about three quarters of an hours daylight left. A night
amongst the spiders and snakes was looking increasinlgly likely. I made
a quick mental inspection of the contents of my rucksack. The only food
I was carrying was a piece of chocolate of undeterminable age, a left
over from a previous expedition. "Looks like boil in the bag spider
for tea tonight", I shouted down to Aitch.