Today's Stories To the wrong side of the world and back. Caves and Pots Kevin Welch: Interview

To the wrong side of the world and back
Already fighting with a horrible hangover, I was not happy to hear the news that thunderstorms were forecast. The heavy atmosphere on the hotel balcony had everyone mooching around wondering what to do.

The mood changed in the afternoon, however, with the news that the weather was not going to be as bad as initially predicted. Kev, Nikki and I began packing and looking forward to our trip. We awoke feeling a little better than the previous morning. Oyvind was up and about and appeared to be willing to honour the commitment that he had made the night before (whilst drunk).

	Kev has a close encounter with an amblypygid.

We made our way down to the colectivo point accompanied by Maru, who did a splendid job of sorting our transport to Tepetzala whilst defending us from a local chap who was insisting we had been worrying his cattle.

Oyvind intrepidly donned his helmet and entered the cave. His adventurous spirit waned, however, when he met the Amblypygid. I don't know whether it was the horrible looking insect that had shaken Oyvind's nerve, or whether, as he said, he didn't want to get his trousers wet, but he left us at the big puddle that marks the entrance of the system.

During our previous exploration we had passed an area of passage that could sump very easily, and with the weather outside still unsettled, we were cautious about this downstream section of the cave. Our reservations were not helped by the cloudy streamway that we met after two hours of caving. Pressing on, we reached the point of previous exploration, and began surveying. The streamway did not let us down and carried on going. With one eye on the water level and our minds on the previous section of low passage the water again levelled out.

We were all of the opinion that we were about to hit a sump as the ceiling was low and there was no draught. It was at this point that an opening on the right revealed a high aven from which a strong draught was being pulled into the passage. Happy that the passage continued, and concerned about flood risk, we resolved to turn around and survey a lead that we had left on the way down.

Comfortable in our bivvy bags and with food on the stove, we settled down to a hipflask full of local hooch. It was at this point that we decided the downstream section of our survey was the wrong side of the world to be, should the stream rise.

This last piece of passage has now been donned "The wrong side of the world".
A quick tally told us that we had surveyed around 620 meters of new passage, add this to the 357 meters surveyed previously and we had extended the cave by nearly one third.

Content with the days work Bagpuss yawned and settled down to sleep.