- - - 8/11/2007 - - -

Spelunking

Filed under: — Andy @ 7:01 am

The weekend after we got back from Tokyo, Ken had signed us all up for a cave tour. I have been in many caves before so I knew what to expect… but this time was different. What we really signed up for was "Extreme Tunnel Rats”. The caves we went to were not the usual touristy caves with lights and guardrails inside, these were actual bring your own source of light, dirty, muddy, full of bats, and and during WWII hundreds of Japanese bodies caves and tunnels. To go into the caves means you will get dirty, and if you want to go far enough, crawling on your hand and knees through mud, water, and bat guano.


This first cave was the easy one. One of the roomier and drier ones.


Ken warping back to WWII and waiting for the enemy.


An exit to cave number 2. It wasnt easy to get in or out of this one.


Cave number 3. This is where it got really muddy. Plus Ken looks really scary.


Making our way deeper and deeper into the cave. Supposedly 1000 Japanese people lived in this cave for 80 days while the Americans were invading the island during WWII. As I made my way through I could imagine what hell it would be like to live in those kind of conditions. Needless to say, many never came out of the cave.


The cave did not smell very good thanks to all these bats. I could hear them fly within centimeters of my head then turn on a dime and fly away.


Completely muddy from crawling through tiny muddy passageways, and slightly injured from sliding and falling down a ledge, we finally made it to the deepest part of the cave.


Sliding down a muddy ledge is easy, trying to get back up is very difficult, but with some teamwork we made it out alive. Im also surprised my camera, with all the mud that got in it, made it out alive too.