Day 23: Why do people criticize Americans for speaking slowly and loudly when they aren't understood by the locals? I really wish the Mexicans would do that to me! I ask so many questions with yes or no answers, and instead of telling me Si o No, they prattle off for 30 sec, at a volume I can barely hear. Then we both look frustrated at each other for a bit. Argh. But I digress...

This morning I headed off from town to the swimming hole of Minas Viajes, about 10 miles south of The Orange. It was very beautiful, and had a lot of people swimming and grilling out. I spent about an hour and a half cooling off in the milky emerald waters. I swam over to the waterfalls and went behind them, then swam down through them. What fun! On the way out, I bought a skinned mango on a stick with lime juice & chili powder. YUM!!!

I headed south to the town of Aquismon, where our group stayed in December 2008. I have now come full circle! While of course conceptually I know that getting on a plane and flying somewhere, I travel the same ground as driving, it's different when I actually have DRIVEN here from my front door. I've experienced all the land between there and here, instead of getting into a plane, and getting out of it once I've arrived. Make sense?

Last night I dropped off my luggage in the hotel room, and rode the bike up to Golindrinas cave just before sunset. It's a vertical cave, the deepest cave in the area, popular for watching the tens of thousands of birds that live on its walls, fly out at sunrise and fly in at sunset. At the top is a circular hole about 300' across, overlooking a vertical shaft that drops 1250 feet straight down. It's actually bell shaped, so the ground above is undercut on all sides, overhanging the cave below.

In 2008 there were 3 guys or so that would wrap a rope around your waist and hold you as you leaned over the abyss. Well word must have gotten out, because now there were around 10 guys with ropes, working for tips only. And for $10, they'd lower you 20 meters down and haul you back up. I decided to partake (in the cheaper option), and hung out over space looking at the other world more than a thousand feet below me. It was almost primeval, like looking into the window of a million years ago...