Sunday, March 04, 2007

Caverna do Diabo

Sorry to leave you hanging for a week. Got busy...

So we left our hotel and headed down the dangerous road to our destination, and the cave made all the concerns we had go away. The site itself looked a little run-down. It's in a very poor part of the state. Upon arriving there were several kids at our doors asking for money for food. We gave them a little of both. Unfortunately, we found out that there were more where the originals came from and we ran out of food to give.

We ended up assembling at the start of the trail with our guide ("guia" in Portuguese - the same word for "map") who led us to the cave...

The cave was quite dark, but along the path they had lights so you could see where you were going. They also had bright spotlights every once in a while to show off a nice part of the cave.

The whole cave was incredible if you ask us. The stalactites (which hang from the ceiling) and stalagmites (which grow up from the ground) were spectacular. Had it not been for the dust and dirt in the cave (and there was plenty of that) the stalactites would have been a beautiful ivory color.

These pictures are all taken without a flash. The cave was so dark, that a flash only lit up about 10 feet in front of you. However, with a special setting on my digital camera, I was able to get these fabulous pictures, while everyone with a traditional camera and flash will discover that their pictures look lousy. Have I mentioned how much I love that digital camera we have?

The name of the cave (see the title) means "Cave of the Devil," and if the spiky formations weren't creepy enough, at the end of the trail there's a natural formation on the wall that looks really eerie...

This is the closest I could zoom in on the "picture" on the wall of the cave. To think that this was not carved into the wall is pretty creepy. God really does have a sense of humor. What gets me is "How in the world did people discover this cave in the middle of nowhere, and then, with no natural light, find this picture of a person's face over 500m into the cave?" Talk about finding a needle in a haystack! We had to get a few people to shine their flashlights on the "face" as again, a flash didn't work from that distance.

The trip was absoutely wonderful. We made some great memories as a family and we got to see one of God's amazing natural wonders.