"Look up," Jeff said to me.
"Jeff, I just stuck my hand in a pile of bat shit. I know what's up there," I responded.
We had just hiked about 45 minutes to the entrance of Millennium Caves - named, owned, and operated by the village of Espiritu Santo.
It. Was. Awesome.
Another 45 minutes through the pitch black caves using flash lights... careful footing, don't slip, don't slip. Watch your head. Look up - ohmigod bats.
Waist deep in water at points and totally forgetting about the camera around my neck. I giggled my way through this Lara Croft type excursion.
The French woman with us had a GoPro and I was jealous. I asked her to email me the video and she promised she would, then added, "It's going to be a few months though... we're still traveling for a bit!" I was jealous again.
Stopping only once for lunch at the exit of the cave - tuna fish sandwich that the cook at our bungalow prepared for us, it was so so - we continued onto the second half of our journey following the Sarakata River. For this they took our belongings because we'd be swimming parts of the way. So the pictures only exist in my mind.
They recommended life jackets to help us float - something Jeff refused (along with any form of water shoes) and I followed suit. I'm not about to the pansy of the group. The next hour and a half was spent wading through waterfalls, climbing over boulders, and swimming through crevasses in the earth with grand stone walls on either side. In true rainforest form every so often drops would fall through the openings in the trees above the river to where we were swimming.
As we floated, the rain fell. I felt joy and serenity and peace.
{ N.R.S. }
