21 November
I didn’t have a very good feeling about this trip for a number of reasons. Things have been pretty mixed-up in my life lately, and my heart was definitely not in it. I woke up at 4:00 after a horrible night’s sleep. I showered, dressed, and had a bowl of cereal. I was heading out the driveway when I got to close to the concrete block wall. I bent my right rear rim enough that air was escaping from the tire. I stopped, grabbed a hammer, and pounded it back into shape. Then I drove to the Quikmart for some final pounding and air. It was now 4:45. After that the drive seemed to go OK. I stopped for gas in New Braunfels. There was really dense fog south of San Antonio. Julia called around 6:45. I was happy to hear from her, since I had such a crappy night. Randy called at 7:00 to ask if I was playing disc golf. Of course not, I told him. I was already way south of S.A. I stopped in Laredo for insurance, to change money, and to talk with Julia one last time. The bridge fare has gone up to $2.00. I didn’t get stopped at Mexican Customs. I picked up my tourist visa in about five minutes. There was a new form, which was handed out in the parking lot. Then I stood in line for 3.5 hours to get my car papers. Again, a new form. And when they finally gave me my sticker, they just handed it to me and let me put it on the windshield myself. I cruised south on 85, with only the briefest of stops at the Frontier checkpoint. Soon I arrived in Monterrey, and got through town probably the easiest ever. Some festival was going on, with parades of people in costumes. By now I was getting really hungry, and had to pee again. I went directly to the Super Wal-Mart, intending to do everything at one stop (get more money, pee, eat, pick up the groceries and supplies). I did the third thing, then loaded a cart with groceries, figuring I would get out quickly and eat on the way up the mountain. The next bad news was that it was too late on Sunday to buy alcohol. Then, when I got to the check-out stand, I found out that my ATM card wouldn’t work there, after being told it would. No problem, I would just go over to the ATM and withdraw cash. Um momento, por favor? The first machine runs out of money with the guy in line in front of me. I move over to the second, and keep getting “transaction denied” messages. This can’t be happening! I move on to ATM #3, which actually has a bank office with tellers, and it’s open! No luck at the machine, but one of the tellers, who even spoke English, stepped in to help. We even tried to call the 800 number on the card, only to find that the Wells-Fargo phone system was inoperable! AAARGHHH! After about an hour and a half of frustration, I finally ended up putting enough items back to meet the total cash I had in my wallet, about 800 pesos. (I started out with almost 1300 pesos worth of groceries.) The reason I didn’t take out more cash in the US was to get the more favorable exchange rate from the Mexican banking machine. By now I was starving and my gasoline situation was getting critical. I scraped up ninety pesos in change and one US dollar, allowing me to purchase about five gallons of gas at the nearest Pemex. A guy at the gas station offered me $20 US for my vehicle registration sticker. Maybe I should have taken it, after all, the new sticker was in my briefcase. I continued to El Cercado, and stopped at the Moreno house for the cabin key. No one was home, no note, no key. By this time it is about 5:00 and all I had to eat all day was a bowl of cereal at 4:30 in the morning. So I headed up the mountain, dodging hundreds of tourists parking or driving back down the mountain. I got to the cabin around 7:00, finding Michael napping on the porch. I pulled the boards off the bathroom window, climbed in, and unlocked the doors, finding a key inside. We built a fire, I made and ate two big tuna-salad sandwiches, and was asleep by 9:00.

22 November 1999
We were up by 7:30, ate some cereal, cleaned up the cabin, fixed the bathroom window, and left. We drove into Laguna de Sanchez, bought some meat, beer, ice, and a few other groceries I couldn’t get the day before. We called the States via satellite phone from the Conasupo for $1.20 per minute. I got in touch with Julia, and asked her to get in touch with Chris Vreeland to bring the thesis I forgot, and more gas. We started to drive to Camotera, only to be stopped by a locked chain at the gate. We spent the next two hours tracking down the Juez and getting permission to continue. We finally got everything worked out, and drove on. We met Gerado and his extended family on the way in. They were collecting Spanish moss, baling it, and selling it for export into the States. We continued to the far end of the plateau and set up camp. My gasoline situation was now really worrying me. I took a 2-hour hike near camp with Michael to look for caves. We found lots of leads, but most required a fair bit of work. The only open cave discovered was Poison Ivy Pit (Pozo Hiedra Venenosa). After we got back to camp, Gerado dropped by. We all had some beer, made dinner, and talked for three hours. I went to bed around 9:30, and fell asleep with my walkman.

23 November 1999
Got up at 7:00. I heard the damn cowbells all night. Michael and I whipped up a big breakfast of eggs, tomatoes, nopales, onions, and carne seca. We got our gear together and drove to Gerado’s. I dropped off the five bags of clothes and stuff that I brought for him and his family. He jumped in the truck and took us up the other road across the arroyo, past the old sawmill. This is the road Mark and Nancy drove up a year ago, reporting no caves. Gerado showed us an big scary pit in the middle of a side arroyo. The lip is surrounded by unstable boulders, soil, stream cobbles, and logs. In fact, a 100' slide recently occurred from the road above the pit, just missing the entrance. Then he showed us a FRO guarded by agaves. He claimed there were other pits, but they were either too far away, or he could not remember where they were. So the three of us started walking around. I immediately found one, Hickory Pit (Pozo de Nogal Americano), and we eventually found another after about an hour, Open Pit (Pozo Abierto). Like the other side of the arroyo, there were lots of sinks and dig leads in this area. I’m calling it Camotera Opuesto (“Opposite Camotera”). On the way back to camp we stopped at the stream to bathe, since all three of us were pretty ripe. I stripped and jumped in a pool, which was damn cold. But I washed my hair and body, and felt 100% better. Michael basically sponged off, and Gerado merely watched, amused. We dropped him off, and returned to camp. I prepped the chicken and put it in a pot to boil. Then we took off on another hike. We saw two leads very near camp (which we forgot to check out later in the week), and still more sinks and dig leads. It wasn’t until we were almost back at camp that I found another cave, Pond Pit (Pozo Estanque). We got back and cooked the chicken a little more, made the rice, and put everything together in a nice pipian mole. A most wonderful meal. It was really cloudy and cool all afternoon, and we tried to stay up later since we were getting so much sleep. But by 9:00 I was ready for bed again. It got pretty cold in the middle of the night, so I added my Wag Bag inside my sleeping bag. Perfect.

24 November 1999
Once again we were up by 7:00. Michael cooked more eggs for breakfast. Today we decided to hike down the main arroyo, looking at the shelters checked out previously by Minton, Weaver, and Brown. But we wanted to get further downstream than they did. We took the short spur road off the main Camotera road and parked by the stream. The hiking was fairly easy, alternating with boulder-hopping and some short scramble down the larger boulder chokes. The climbs to some of the shelters were more work, being really steep. All the holes we saw turned out to be old spring outlets or cave remnants. Lots of old stal, but really dry and dusty. Michael got a few pictures, as he did all week. We ended our hike when the arroyo became a slot canyon with wall-to-wall water over one meter deep. Michael twisted his ankle on a loose rock near the end, and got pretty wet. He hiked back to the truck OK, but the foot became increasingly painful as the night progressed.

After our hike we decided to head to El Cercado so I could get money and gas. The old guy living near the (now locked) gate caught us just before the pass and gave us the key. When we got to the gate though, there was no lock. We made copies of the key in Cercado just to be on the safe side. At the bank, I found out I left my wallet back in camp. Doh! After all my fretting about money and gas, I just assumed it was in the truck and never looked. Fortunately Michael was able to exchange more of his American money. He also bought a Mexican phone card and tried to call his friend at the University of Linares, but no luck. We gassed up and decided to eat in town. I wanted to take him to the seafood restaurant at the start of the mountain road, but it was closed. We continued up the road, figuring we would find something somewhere. We finally saw a sign in La Nogalera, but it didn’t look like the place was quite ready for business. We got out and asked anyhow, and the Señora said yes, as long as we wanted chicken. Well, chicken was sounding pretty good about then. She cut up a whole bird and cooked it in a broth while we had a cerveza. She eventually brought out this huge bowl, wonderfully seasoned and accompanied by homemade tortillas and a really nice chili pequin salsa. Delicious! We weren’t able to finish it all, the bowl was that large. But we tried. After bloating ourselves, Michael borrowed their phone to call his friend in Linares. I was hanging out when I hear Chris and Gary drive by. Luckily it was still light, and Chris saw my truck. We regrouped, and continued to Laguna. We all had walkie-talkies, so we chatted a lot on the way. In Laguna we picked up more meat, ice, beer, tortillas, etc. Then came the long drive to Camotera. Boy, were those guys slow! The dust was pretty bad, but I had to stop every five minutes and wait for four. We finally got to camp around 9:00 or so (they met us in La Nogalera at 6:30), and found Robert Albach and his dad Roger. I remember Robert asking about the trip a while back, but I never heard back from him and figured he wasn’t coming. Amazingly, he not only got to Laguna de Sanchez, but found our camp on the remote end of Camotera! Incredible! We helped put up everyone’s tent, fed the hungry, and talked until 11:00 or so. The fog was really heavy that night, and condensed on the trees and dripped to the ground, sounding like rain.

25 November 1999
The day started out foggy, and didn’t get much better. We did some caving today, since it was warmer and drier underground than on the surface. First I lead the whole group to Pond Pit, then Poison Ivy Pit, then finally to the March Pit (Pozo Marzo). There, Robert, Jerry, and Geary elected to stay and survey. Chris, Erin, and I returned to Poison Ivy. Michael’s foot still bothered him, so he wasn’t caving today. I rigged the entrance while Chris geared up Erin. I rapped in to find no continuation. Erin started down, but didn’t have enough weight to make the micro-rack work. So Chris pulled her up and gave her his Petzl rack, which seemed to work better. Then he entered, and we made two horizontal shots down the fissure. Total cave survey: 15.5 meters deep, 7 meters of floor. Bah. We returned to camp to find that Michael had prepared pasta. Yum! Chris and Roger and I went back to Pond pit to rig it and survey (Roger stayed topside). The March Pit groups went back to a dig, Madrone Fissure (Grieta de Madrone). Pond Pit was also dead bottom at 18.8 m. We got back to camp around 5:00, and were leaving to get the Thanksgiving cabrito from Gerado. Then we heard Geary on the radio. It seems he couldn’t fit in Madrone Fissure, so he started back to camp. He missed the road and lost his bearings in the fog. We spent the next _ hour talking him in. Chris, Michael and I then took the Gray Pendejo out for the main course. Gerado hap prepared us over four gallons of delicious goat soup, and we had to carry it back to camp in a five-gallon plastic bucket. We supplemented that with quesadillas, refritos, peas and corn, and baked potatoes. Altogether, it was quite the Thanksgiving feast. Gerado eventually joined us, and we ate and drank until 11:00 or so.

26 November 1999
The weather finally cleared up last night just before we went to sleep. This morning began clear and beautiful, and stayed like that all day. After a leisurely breakfast (I cooked ham, egg, and cheese breakfast tacos) and some much-needed camp chores (mainly dish-washing), we were finally on our way. We packed up ropes and bolting gear, personal cave gear, loaded up the Pendejo and the Schindel-mobile, and drove to Camotera Opuesto. On the way we stopped by El Infierno so everybody could ooh and aah. Once back on the karst, we dropped off Geary, Jerry, Michael and Robert at the scary pit, which still doesn’t have an official name. Chris and I took Sue and the kids further out to where I found the other caves a few days earlier. I rigged Hickory Pit and Chris rapped down to find it dead-bottom after 21 m. In the meantime, Sue and Graham were ridgewalking and Graham found another cave. This one was freeclimbable, but only 15 m deep. It had a woodrat hutch with a dead lizard at the bottom. Graham finally decided to call it Thorny Pit (Pozo Espinosa). We continued along the karst looking at future digs and many FROs. Finally we got to the open-air Pozo Abierto. I rigged again, and let Chris have the honors of first descent. This one stopped at 12 m. We located still more FRO pits on the way back to the truck, where we met Jerry. Seems his wimp glands started swelling as he was about to enter the pit, so he took a long hike. He didn’t find any new caves in the last couple of hours. We drove to the scary pit to find Geary just exiting. After another hour everyone was out and the pit was derigged. The cave ended at a sump, the first underground water we found in all out trips there. By that time we were in the shadow of the mountain and getting pretty cold. We bundled everyone into the trucks and hurried back to camp. We arrived before it was completely dark, and gorged ourselves on an incredible goat stew that Roger had tended all day. (There was a good bit of goat and broth left from the night before, so we deboned it, added potatoes, carrots, onions, and the leftover peas and corn. ¡Muy rico!) We stayed around the fire for a while making plans, finalizing cave names, playing with lasers, and enjoying the clear night sky.

27 November 1999
Today Chris, Jerry, and I went to Tres Luces to continue the survey from the March trip. Robert and Roger took off for Texas, Michael (with his foot feeling much better) hiked up to Gerado’s spring to consult on his water system, and Geary and Sue took the kids to Cueva Martiniano for a fun family caving trip. Our team got the much-needed GPS location (which I forgot in March), and proceeded into the cave. Besides survey, the other objective of this trip was for Chris to get some good cave shots, which I had been promising. We surveyed the upper level loop pretty quickly, having no trouble finding the tie-in stations. After a couple more photo stops we started on the down-trending lead at Station 14 that had me so excited after the March trip. The nastiness where I stopped before was brief, and the passage soon opened up and got nice. We went up a beautiful calcite-lined infeeder on the left that headed steeply upward to a flowstone pinch with good air. Downstream went through another awkward spot and popped out at the top of a nice canyon. Unfortunately this soon crapped out in mud, but still had a lot of air. End of survey. This is definitely the longest cave on Camotera, and I think the second deepest (after Infierno). Back in camp we hurriedly packed, headed up over the pass (with the obligatory photo stop), and back to the cabin. We cooked as much of the perishable food as we could and hung around the fire for a while. I eventually climbed into the loft to sleep. As I lay there in that familiar place, I couldn’t help but think that everything was so very different from my previous trips there. Every other time we had a hard-caving, hard-partying group. We always went home with more leads than we had time to check. It was a really positive feeling, a really great energy. Now, on this trip, I had good friends I counted on back out at the last minute. I felt more alone, even with the friends currently present. And the camaraderie wasn’t the same, since everyone but Michael didn’t get there until half-way through the week. We had kids (three!) For the first time, and a caver’s father. Our leads turned out to be duds, and we seem to have exhausted the area’s potential. I was not really up for this trip before I left Austin, and now the disillusionment want even more pronounced. Mentally, I closed the book on the Laguna de Sanchez Project. For future trip I will direct my attentions elsewhere. Now all that remains is to finish the maps, write the cave descriptions, and work the whole mess into a publishable form.

28 November 1999
We woke up, packed and cleaned, and drove off the mountain. We wasted a couple of hours at lunch at Los Cabazos, had a minor detour and vehicle trouble in Monterrey, and endured a 2.5 hour wait at the Columbia crossing. We kept in touch by walkie-talkie the whole time. I got home after midnight, and was asleep by 1:00.

— Jim “Crash” Kennedy