(6) The Cave and Arbol de Hinche Huevos

     Every year we always hear about someone doing a trek up to the caves.  What caves? where are they? are they very big? how is the hike? And so the questions go and it is always the same thing, “one of these days we should go to the caves”.  Well one of these days finally happened and now I have all (some) of the answers to all the questions.

    From Troncones, it is short drive north through the fishing village of Majuhua.  Continue on the well traveled dirt road that leads to Hwy 200 and when you see a cornfield... pull over.  It is the only cornfield on this road so once you see it you are there….if you make it to the higway.. you went way too far.  My intrepid guide asked if we could take my machete because he had forgotten his and mine was in the car.  Why would I happen to have a machete in the car you ask?  Because you never know when you may run across a fresh coconut that needs to be consumed on a hot November day…remember all you snowbound northerners, we are still in the low 90’s.   From the looks of where we were headed my guess was there would be no coconut trees but only dense jungle.   Glad I wore shorts while my guide was wearing jeans….did he forget to mention something to me that might help during our hike.  “No problemo” and so we hiked through the dew soaked field that quickly soaked my tennis shoes and legs.  As we walked through the tall grass all I could think was: “I wonder if there are spiders and snakes, I hate spiders and snakes, maybe I should be carrying the machete”.  Once we crossed the field and entered into the jungle it proved to be a well traveled path.  We climbed a pretty steep uphill, even by Colorado standards, that traversed among towering trees.  I was very surprised to see remnants of several platforms in the trees with an old zip line.  When I asked Blanco (my guide) about them he said it was just some crazy Canadians who hung out there years ago.  The zip lines actually looked in decent shape but the wooden platforms hanging in the trees looked anything but safe.  We hiked a good 45 minutes at a brisk pace and reached the cave.  The cave is enormous!  I guess I had envisioned something much smaller and not nearly so impressive.  We scaled the set rope down into the cave where we could fully take in the size of it all.  However, not having lamps we really could not explore very far, and the intense humidity quickly drove us back up to dryer air.  On the hike back down the hill Blanco pointed out various plants of interest.  Perhaps the most interesting was a tree that he warned against touching.  He said the tree is called “arbol de hinche huevos” and then grabbed himself to make the point more clear.  The translation is “tree of swollen balls” and the story is that’s what happens if you touch it…the tree that is.  Anyway, whether it’s true or not, I kept my distance.

                                      The cornfield

                                     Machete Marty

                                            The platform of death

                                  The cave and Blanco

                           Arroz de leche...the thorns on this plant won't make your balls swell but it will hurt!

Fruit on a Coacoyul tree

     So I have finally seen the cave that I have wondered about for so long only to discover that there are more impressive caves just south of Troncones.  One of these days I should go to those caves.