Day 269, Tuesday march 18th – a neat cave exploration

Day 269, Tuesday march 18^th – a neat cave exploration

Goats hanging out in the shade

Up and at em to explore a new anchorage.  Dawson starts the day with a scouting mission a.k.a. a run.  He heads over to the east coast to try to reach the ocean.  He makes it to the beach and sees goats on the way, but nothing else too exciting.  Total run about 8 kms.  Julie stays dedicated to her French lessons.  We swing by Maraki on our way to town to drop off our garbage and fill a few water bottles, to see what they are up to.  They suggest going to the caves which are about 2 miles away.  They have bicycles, but their visiting son Jim does not have one, so one of them will hitchhike with us.  Typically we have not hitchhiked but often people stop to offer rides.  This time we are actually going to hitchhike.  Chad from Meridian is also joining us but we end up waiting about 45 minutes on the shore as he is helping Drew load the boat with water as they are departing tomorrow. 

Sign at Queen's Highway 

Once us walkers are gathered we head out and it takes about 15 minutes and then a white pickup truck stops and offers us a ride.  We are glad for the ride as it takes the vehicle a while to get where we are going.  Soon enough we are joined up with John and Jim to start the cave adventure.

The caving starts with an easy entry but soon enough we are going downwards into the bowels of the earth.  We are looking at all the graffiti trying to locate the oldest signature.  1872 is the oldest we see, but we don’t really believe it.  The cave is amazing and we walk underground for about a km.  there are bats, and underground river, lots of stalactites and stalagmites.  Overall it was one of the best caves we have ever been in.  To get out

Start of the cave, note the graffiti on the back

one of the many room in the cave

Julie enjoying her cave tour

of the cave we climb a rope ladder after ducking low to get under an overhang.  The rope ladder is in a cylindrical hole in the ground about 10 feet across and 60 feet deep.

Chad making his way out of the cave 

Jim emerging into daylight

 After the caves we go for a snorkel in an inland lake nearby that is salty as it is fed by the underwater rivers from the ocean.  It is not as salty as we are used to which is refreshing. 

Snorkeling in salt pond i

Jim with his pet seahorse

Lucy and Julie 

We look for seahorses, but do not see any, however Jim found one and brought it over for us to see.   The snorkel was nice as we were getting quite hot from our underground caving.

It is now about 3:00 and we head back to the town centre.  We get a ride immediately with a woman on her way to pick up her daughter from school.  She has the air conditioning on which is a luxury to all of us.  Four of us squish in and enjoy the 5 minute car ride that would have taken us an hour to walk.  Chad, Dawson and Julie head over to Da Spot for a cold one, while Lucy awaits John and Jim who are biking back from the caves.

Chad and Julie at Da Spot

We are joined at Da Spot by Drew also from Meridian, and Deb and Glen from Oriel Sea.  We say our good-byes to them as they are heading out tomorrow towards Florida and we may not cross paths again (although we may see them along the US coast once we head on our way also).

We don’t stay too long at Da Spot as we want to make the grocers to

pick up some bait in the hopes of fishing on the banks and in the harbour to complement our groceries.

Once back on the boat we cook up our feast and as always enjoy our coffee and King’s cribbage game before heading off to bed.  We also chat to Ross as he is making plans and sorting through career and academic decisions and seeking some input from us.

Cheers

Julie and Dawson