Part 21. Lost?

When we pulled up to the caves, I was quite taken aback at the beauty of the place. It was like a picture from a fairy tale, and no sign of caves or rivers anywhere. I wandered down to this rest spot while Steven stopped to use the bathroom in the parking area. I waited...and waited...and waited... and eventually had to go back and see if he was ok. He had to wait a bit, there was a bus in front of us, and they were all lined up to use the washroom, so he had just gotten in. Meanwhile, the woman who led the tour through the caves had left without us, as well as without an Australian couple. Steven hurried ( as I hollered "Hurry!") and off we dashed, up the stairs, just in time for me to snap a picture and see the Aussie woman disappearing into the dark cavern. Hoping that she was going the right way (the stairs also continued upwards, to the left) I followed her in. It felt so Indiana Jones-ish.

The caves were somewhat gloomy, but there was a lot of light behind us, from the opening, as well as a nice cement walkway that wound it's way through the rocks and stalactites. There was also some sort of electric lights, or maybe battery powered ones, spaced out every 20 or so feet. The four of us meandered along, trying not to bump our heads on the various rock protrusions. It was very cool, both temperature-wise and description-wise. I am a little claustrophobic though, and I was getting concerned that we couldn't hear the voices of the others. The path got narrower and narrower, and darker and darker and eventually we came to a fork in the trail. Both ways looked really narow and really dark. I scrabbled through my small daypack and brought out a tiny flashlight, and, to my delight, so did the Aussie woman. We both commented at how we have always carried a little flashlight and have never had to use it, until now. Both ways looked like you would almost have to crawl and I was pretty sure that both ways were wrong. We all stared at each other in dismay, figuring that we had missed a major turn somewhere. We could have turned around and gone back, but the trail ended with a boat ride on an underground river and came out miles down the road, where our various rides would be waiting for us. Hmmmm...what to do now? In our gloomy silence, we heard the faint shout of people, so we scrambled over the rocks and hastily ran down the trail and rounded a corner to find a boatman waiting for us. It was like the ferryman Charon on the River Styx. To get on? Or risk roaming this side for eternity? Steven gave me a push to jolt me out of my daydreams and in we clambered.