River & Caves

Yesterday we did some more exploring of some places on the side of the island we are staying now. The first stop was the Green Grotto Caves. These are a set of two very large caves and is a large tourist attraction. We were assigned a tour guide and then were instructed to put on a hard hat with a mesh hair net underneath (for sanitary purposes of course :)).

As soon as we went into the very large cave opening there were bats flying everything. If you click on the picture and make it larger you can see the size of the bat with it's wing opened...yep, they were a bit creepy. Israel was stiff for most of the tour with anxiety from the bats, he didn't enjoy this stop very much.

Once we entered the 2nd cave our guide asked us if we like snakes. Kati speaks up and says, "OH, I don't like snakes!" and stops right where she was. He said there are boa constrictors around and he started looking for one. He finally found one laying at the bottom of a long tube like formation. Nice and far away. Kati needless to say no longer enjoyed this stop either from this point on. :)

The caves were originally used by slaves that were escaping and then to flee from the Spanish during war. It then was turned into disco/bar for a few years. I honestly can't image being in this cave at night, he said the bats were still out but further in the cave due to the noise. After that the government took possession of the cave and made it into a tourism spot.

You can't really see it in the picture but the 2nd cave we went to had a very large mineral lake, it was crystal clear but toxic from all the bat droppings which have nitrate in it. Our guide turned off all the lights at this point to show what it was like in the dark...you couldn't see a drop of light. This gave Mark anxiety. :)

We then headed to the Dunn's river which is where a river turns into a fall and then flows into the ocean. We pulled up and there were tour buses everywhere (the cruise ship port is pretty close by)...this is our first time running into a lot of tourists and we were thankful that up until now we had eluded being around a lot of other people.

The plan was to hike/climb up the falls. We started at the beach and started our way up. There was a option to use a guide with a bunch of other people but we opted to do it on our own. It was fun finding our way up the falls, stepping down and not being quite sure where the bottom was. It was beautiful. I couldn't bring the camera along but it really was amazing! These pictures are at a spot that is about half way up the river.

It was such a great adventure!