Sima de la Higuera

Description

This was the shortest drive we had done to a cave all week- only 44 minutes including a fun bit of off-roading nearing the cave. After a surprisingly small amount of faff, we made our way to the entrance and were overjoyed to find the rigging still in place from the previous group’s trips. The cave gets its name from the fig tree whose roots go deep down into the rift which gave it quite a temple run feel when we dropped in. The descent was uneventful if not a bit annoying, with some large flies mysteriously appearing halfway down and annoying us to the bottom. These were quickly forgotten about when we saw the start of the gorgeous formations. We stripped off our SRT kits and, having forgotten the survey, went for a poke around the right-hand path first. This ended very quickly with a beautiful view of a coral gallery adorned with stals. The left-hand path had a painted sign that Sylvia translated for us which read roughly “Please try to preserve the cave and stick to the paths, do not dispose of carbide in the water or contaminate it with other things as it links to the aquifer where we get our drinking water”. We pushed on through some of the most gorgeous passage any of us had seen, following a conveniently placed conservation line through tight squeezes. One of these posed more difficulty than the rest as you popped out the squeeze into a well decorated 3m drop into a rift which a previous group had had a misadventure with. Shortly after we reached the water’s edge and grabbing a quick snack, we started across the water, tying T-shirts around our heads to stop them getting wet as we bridged across some very deep aquafers. During this traverse one of our companion flies was tragically lost to the water after it got caught by a splash. We ended up only getting about waist wet and cracked on into the most beautiful bit of the cave so far - “Paradise Hall”. Harvey spent an inordinate amount of time setting lighting up lighting for photos, much to Orry and Sylvia’s frustration. This was after Orry had already confiscated his phone earlier after similar behaviour… After finishing posing for photos and starting to feel a slight chill, we turned back. Pausing only briefly to let sylvia ring out her foot juice from her damp socks into Murcia’s drinking water supply, we made quick progress all the way to the bottom of the entrance shaft. As the final group of the trip we bore the responsibility of derigging the cave and reclaiming of the gear. This was quite annoying at the bottom as the rocks were sharp and jutted out catching even the shortest loops of rope. The bag had to be packed every 4 or 5 meters of ascent to stop this and we (except Sylvia, who was disappointed to find her straps had been sewn in a way that prevented this) untied the straps on the back of the tackle sacks and tucked them in to stop them catching. With no hold ups on the way out we got back to the car and drove home, totally forgetting to give back the key…

Written by Harvey Griffin