The third cave we found along the Pihuamo River was brought to our attention by a man named Catalino who stepped out of the blackness into the light of our campfire and said, "I hear you are looking for caves." Catalino spoke of a third river cave north of Puerto de Fatima and "bound to contain treasure, so don't forget your metal detector."
Next day, on our way to the cave, Catalino showed us three large rocks covered with engravings from a bygone era. The third rock was particularly interesting because all the figures on it were spirals. "I'm sure it's a map and the spirals mean hills... but we can't quite figure out where the treasure is supposed to be." Apparently the indians of the past had never been told that an "X" is de rigueur for marking "the spot."
The entrance to Catalino's cave is 2 meters wide and 1.5 meters high. "This entire opening fills with water during the rainy season," stated our guide, who was already adjusting his treasure-hunter's headlamp.
Indeed, we were later shown a flowstone waterfall outside the cave which apparently turns into a raging cascade in the summer. Subsequent informants, however, say the heavy flow only occurs immediately after a storm.
Inside the cave we spotted two canclos, cave-dwelling versions of the clawed and black-fanged creepers known as vinagrillos. "We call them tindarapos hereabouts," said Catalino and that's where the cave got its name, even though it contains far fewer of these big spindly-legged creatures than most other caves in semi-tropical areas.
We followed a nice walk-along passage past two easy climb-downs, each above a small pool of water. The second of these is bordered by a series of delicate rimstone dams. The passage ends with a nice display of chocolatey stalactites above a muddy drop six meters deep.
After a "sabbatical" year in Saudi Arabia, we returned to Puerto de Fatima only to learn that our guide, Catalino had been murdered during an argument. We hope that the Passages of Plenty he may now be exploring are filled with the treasures he so earnestly sought.
Our ranks had swollen and our team now truly international included Susy Pint, Nani Ibarra, Luis Rojas and Vicente Loreto from Mexico; Claudio Chilomer from Brazil; Chris Lloyd from Canada and John Pint from "gringolandia."
On our first trip beyond Muddy Drop, we used a cable ladder to climb down into a room barely big enough for three people. In its wall was a sort of shelf with a space only about 25 cm high above it. To our surprise, wriggling through this tight slot brought us into a going passage high enough to stand up in. A quick exploration showed us we were in a labyrinth of mud-caked passages, many of them natural fissures. This level of the cave appeared to be a vast reservoir and we could imagine, somewhere ahead of us, a lovely borehole, kilometers long, connecting the cave to the distant hills.
The survey of Cueva Tindarapos was begun during the spring of 1996, only to be interrupted by the onset of the rainy season, offering us an excellent excuse to forget about river caves for a while, wash out our totally mud-impregnated caving duds and roam the rich karst hills of southeast Jalisco in search of more bottomless pits.
By John Pint
