Day 6: Rio Celeste and Venado Caves

Today was a big day!  I had read that it would not be possible to do both of these adventures in one day unless you were a triathelete.  We certainly are not, but this was very doable - we were back in town by 3 pm.  Knowing we only had so much time, I decided to push it.

We set out with our GPS.

Which was FANTASTIC.  Got us everywhere with no issues at all, even though we were turning down unmarked gravel roads in the middle of no where.  It even warned us about one lane bridges (which were prevalent) and speed bumps.

More brahmas

Thankfully no deaths occurred from this disaster waiting to happen while we were behind.  Aaron was eager to pass!

A sneak peak of what was to come

Things grow bigger down there!

 

First stop to the waterfall!  We got there when the park opened at 8, and only saw 3 other people halfway through the hike.  We saw many more coming in as we were leaving, but I'm glad we got there early, besides the fact that it's HOT there.  Getting up early wasn't an issue, daylight (year round) is 5:30 am to 6 pm.  We synced with the sun and went to bed early!

Did I mention it was hot?  But mostly it was just humid - because even though it was hot, it wasn't so hot that we should have been drenched in sweat, but we were soaked just 15 minutes into our hike.  I had to shake the sweat off every few minutes.

The climax of the hike:

Two streams mix and have a chemical reaction, turning the water a beautiful milky blue color.

Of course we have a million pictures of this water - it was unreal!

We booked it out of there - not sure how much time we would need to get to the caves.  Since we were going fast, I just about stepped on this huge snake!  Like I had to jump and I definitely let out a surprised girl scream.  It was a 4 foot non venomous oriole snake, who was happy to be on his way the opposite direction as us. 

We stopped at a little roadside place on the way to the caves for lunch, it was good.

Bonus!  Rice pudding came with it.  Yum.

We made it to the caves by 1:00.  Since we were there in the low season, we were the only ones there, which means our tour started immediately.  We have been in quite a few caves - in S. Dakota, Oregon, Minnesota, Mexico and Washington, and let me tell you this was the most exciting "hands on" tour we've done.

We squeezed through some tight places!

We saw lots of whip scorpions, cave crickets and vampire bats

This formation was called the Papaya.  One big difference about going into caves in other countries is that they let you touch everything - in the US, everything is protected.  I did feel bad walking around and touching the walls - it was unavoidable in some of the areas.

Apparently they have several routes, I asked because I didn't see how most people would have gotten into the places we did.  They had a route for people who were scared, those that were large and probably some in between, and an adventurous route.

We had dinner at a place that was recommended to us from another traveler - it was actually in the owner's house.  My dinner was not very good, but Aaron's was.  The view was impressive, a great place to watch the lightning storm come through.

Dessert was really good - warm bananas and pineapple with ice cream.

Then home for the night - trying to get those clothes to dry with the humidity.