Day 11: This morning I was riding the bike over to the hostel where Luca was staying, and my gear bag fell off the back of the bike, which I didn't notice. Someone waved at me and I was able to get back to the spot within 5 minutes, but it was gone. Lost were my canyon shoes, some misc carabiners and slings, the $80 in plastic parts broken off the bike on Saturday, and the duffel bag itself.

While I was stopped on the road being told about the bag falling off, a huge cloud of smoke (which turned out to be steam) was rising from the motorcycle. It seems the mechanic did not tighten one of the coolant hoses either, and engine coolant was leaking onto the exhaust. I tightened the hose back up and showed up an hour late for our departure for the day's adventure.

Luca, Choy, and I went to Bustamante cave, which is an hour and a half north of Monterrey. Boy has it changed in the 4 years since I've been there. In '06, you had to walk for an hour a thousand vertical feet up from the parking lot on a footpath, to find an old guy sitting at the door collecting 20 pesos. Inside, there was a steep climb down, to the main room with the sodium lights everywhere. The range for the average tourist was limited to where the range of the provided light, but no official restriction.

Now, it's a modern show cave. The hour long hike up is replaced with an air conditioned shuttle bus on a fully paved road. A concrete tunnel was bored into the mountain, and you emerge in the cave on an enormous plastic walkway with railings -- you can only go in a big loop. The lighting is variously colored LED lights on the formations, and the walkway itself has white LED lights to mark the path. It is very different than the old school it once was. We wondered how the new price of 40 pesos for everything could pay for the multimillion dollar visitor center, the paved road, the 6-8 employees we saw working at the time, since we only saw 3 or 4 other tourists along with ourselves...

We ducked under the plastic railing on the walkway and Choy led us to some remote part of the cave off the mapped area. On the way out, try as I might I could not find the helectite room that Kevin, Genevieve, and I stumbled upon last time, which is the most impressive room I've ever seen in any cave.