Day 208 - La Cueva Del Yeso, Curiti, Colombia - Friday 11th May 2012

Today was our action day and boy we needed some exercise after the gigantic pizza we'd eaten the night before. We booked our caving for 2pm and after getting ready, headed out to get a café con leche and pastry before our activity - more healthy stuff hey, I swear we haven't eaten anything green in a very long time!!

2pm arrived and so did our guides on little scooters; as it turned out they spoke as much English as we did Spanish - it was going to make for an interesting day! Sylvian, our hostel owner, did a little translation and as it turned out the caves were an hour away and so we needed to jump on the back of the scooter with the guys. So with me behind one of the guides on one scooter and Ad on the other, we whizzed off at full speed. Now as most people who know me well know, I have the world's smallest head and so when I was given my helmet, which by the way didn't have a scrap to do it up with, it was too big for me - this meant I spent the journey on the scooter holding onto my helmet in fear of it falling off! Luckily it turned out that we weren't going far to their place to pick up the gear for our caving. We got to their place and were pleasantly surprised to find that it was like a small zoo - there was five dogs, a cat, lots of baby rabbits, some hens, some chicks, a cockerel and best of all a small monkey!! It was just like the monkey in The Hangover 2!! We amused ourselves with the animals whilst our guides sorted out the stuff until it was time to leave - I was quite disappointed as could have happily played with the little monkey all afternoon! Back on the scooters (with a helmet that actually fit - yay!) we went on the hour journey to the caves. The scenery and views were beautiful - we passed through hills of green with backdrops of mountains covered in clouds. Little farms were dotted around the countryside and whilst the farmers tended to their crops, kids, goats and dogs played outside to the sound of full blast Latin music - it was such a great ride I nearly forgot about the scary driving skills of the guide and my frequent thoughts of the scooter crashing.

We arrived at our destination via a very bumpy road and started our walk towards the caves - this took about twenty minutes of walking and some back tracking through fields and fences of barbed wire (the thought did occur to us both that perhaps it was the first time our guides had done the tour) - all the while our guides were happily puffing on a joint!!

We eventually arrived at the mouth of the cave and got on our harnesses; through a mixture of sign language, a bit of broken Spanish and broken English we discovered we were to abseil down into the cave. I nervously went first - I was slightly perplexed as I couldn't see how far the drop was and basically worked out that I just needed to start to drop myself backwards! Once down I realised it wasn't that far, only about seventeen foot, although I wished I'd known that one the way down! Ad was next and before we knew it we were all at the bottom of a very dark and silent cave. Once we had all of gear off we started our descent further into the cave - it was brilliant to see all the stalactites and stalagmites and learnt through our broken communication with our guide that they only occur in limestone caves and the difference between the two is the stalactite is above, and hangs downward like an icicle and the stalagmite is below and sticks up. We spent an hour exploring and climbing further into the cave before our rest stop came - the guide asked us to sit down and turn our lights off and be quiet. It was completely pitch black and silent and a bit spooky! With the lights back on we quickly munched our snack the guide had bought us - a sticky and very sweet jam thing, and then got on our way again. Another hour of ducking and diving and climbing and we arrived at the end of the cave where it seemed we had to climb out! With our harnesses back on we climbed our way back out which proved to be extremely difficult in muddy and non-grip trainers!

Back in the fresh air we proudly congratulated each other and examined our various bites and cuts and grazes, Ad and I we're well chuffed and celebrated with a kiss and a smile, the guide celebrated by lighting up another joint!!. The trip back was just as fun and the scenery even better in the fading light of the day.

After a shower and change we headed out for some dinner and beers just off the main square at Gringo Mikes in San Gil before retiring back to our hostel to watch a film and chill.