Jamaican Caving Notes

Still completely drenched from our visit to Riverhead Cave, Stefan, Andreas, and I departed Pollyground and set off for the Lluidas Vale area in search of Worthy Park Cave-1. At the Y intersection on the main road in Ewarton, we veered left and began the very beautiful drive to the Worthy Park Estate.

It was still overcast and wet outside, but the rain had let up. Shortly past the Worthy Park sign, we pulled over to the right side of the road, and parked in a clearing at a point where the road makes a sharp left bend. The clearing had a small slope down to a gully, through which ran a now familiar ‘sweet brown river stream’, and the bank on the other side of the river immediately led steeply up a large, heavily forested hillside with lots of Bamboo and extremely tall trees.

The river went underground into a sinkhole right at that clearing, and a large collection of bamboo stalks had washed down to the sinkhole entrance. Our target cave was on the hillside, but after surveying the situation from the bank of the river, we decided it would be easier to cross the river rather than to go the roundabout way and cut a path through the bush. So for the third time in two days, we climbed into the sweet smelling, brown water. It got as high as chest deep in the middle, and was about 15 feet across. Halfway across, we all heard a gentle splash a few yards upstream. Out of the corner of my eye, it appeared to be a chunk of mud from the bank, but when someone asked "Crocodile"?, the three of us raced out onto the opposite bank.

We started up the thickly forested hill, with Stefan leading the way, skillfully cutting and slashing with his ultra-sharp machete. Winding our way through dead and decaying trees; thick undergrowth; bamboo; macca (thorny bushes); wild coffee and lots and lots of mosquitoes we pushed on carefully, veering to the right. A little searching and we found ourselves at the entrance, easily identified by a HUGE tree root that winds its way around the hillside, right through the cave entrance and on into the cave.

Right away, I could see that this cave was very different to the two we had visited the past weekend (St. Clair and Riverhead) No water or mud. The large number of fruit seeds on the ground and seedlings growing just inside the entrance told us right away that there was at least a population of fruit bats using the cave. It was a much dryer cave, the entrance being many feet up a hillside, and no active river in it.

Immediately noticeable too were the cave crickets evident everywhere. There were many large adults and small juveniles’, the large ones having impressive antennae about 3 inches long. There was a fair amount of guano on the floor, and before long, we came to a descent that required ropes to drop to the lower level 12 - 15 feet down. There were scattered bats flying around overhead, and we moved along very slowly searching the floor and walls for signs of life. No evidence of guano mining, probably due to the difficulty of access, and the fact that the surrounding lands had long (230 + years) been under sugar cane cultivation by a large estate, and there were no small subsistence farmers nearby. The ceiling was quite high, and the seeds and sprouts extended all the way into the cave.

I don’t’ remember seeing any roaches, but there were spiders. The second level didn’t progress any deeper, so we spent a while looking around for further signs of life.

The ascent was a bit challenging for Andreas and I, as it was our first time climbing ropes, but as the climb was not very high, we were all up in a few minutes. A rest at the entrance where we marveled at the magnificent tree root that looked like a giant Python. A smiling Stefan then told us that in Alan G. Fincham's "Jamaica Underground" he thought the directions to "follow the root" into the cave was a typo error, but now he realized that it was in fact correctly spelt root instead of route!

Back at the entrance, we were greeted by a most pleasant sight - Sunshine! Stefan and I celebrated this relatively ‘biologically alive’ cave with a smoke, then we all set off downhill through the bush, deciding to hack a new path through the thick bush to the car park clearing instead of crossing through the water again. Through the thousands of mosquitoes, though not many biting, we made it down in about 20 minutes.