I found these drip pools on top of little sediment mounds to be quite interesting. And am unsure exactly how these mounds got there.
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There aren't so many flat spots to camp. Well, to be truthful there aren't any flat spots. But this big rock in the entrance to Charles Brewer Cave was best. It wasn't flat, and obviously hard as rock, but made for our multi-day camp for work in the cave. This cave has had maybe a dozen visits by cavers. But a number of chairs and similar stuff have been stashed there to make things more comfortable for future explorers. Here is coffee in the morning.
Zuna Cave was not so far from our surface camp, and not a killer hike (some places on the Tepuis of Venezuela are ridiculously difficult to traverse). So here is a picture of Don McFarlane on the rope we used to get to the cave. The pic is taken roughly looking straight up. It is a 40-meter drop, but I was on a giant rock so only 30 meters of rope are shown. And the ever lovely Joyce Lundberg rappelling down toward the bolt that made the rest of the rappel a free drop. The cave had quite a lot of these giant mushroom-like formations. And since the rock is sandstone, quite remarkable. Limestone caves can have an abundance of calcite formations, but sandstone caves do not typically have formations. This bit is part of why we were there. The cave is a stream cave, but water levels were way down when we visited. Even so, the one big room in the cave had a shower of water coming from the ceiling. But it was, in general not that wet.
On the tepuis of Venezuela, there are a lot of interesting plants. That is, if you are a plant person. But even if you are not a plant person, the carnivorous pitcher plants are about as cool as plants get. Here is a photo of a pitcher plant flowering. These plants eat insects, which makes them interesting, but they also host an endemic frog. There is evidence that the frog's poop is part of the food stream for the plants on the tepuis. And how cool is that!
We used helicopters to get to the caves. This can be pretty iffy travel, as the weather is variable and can change quickly. We made the trip to the top of our tepui with two helicopters and several trips by each. This was great, as we could have been weather-bound and not got up there for days. While we got everything right, and went about our caving exploits...
This happened. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/19/venezuela-helicopter-crash_n_1217327.html The people who died in that helicopter crash were friends of our VZ hosts, and there was much sadness on the tepui. But we finished our work, and truly understood why the helicopters couldn't fly and pick us up on-schedule due to clouds and rain. We got off the tepui only a day late, as there was a break in the weather. The tepuis (table mountains) of Venezuela are pretty remote. But you can drive to the area and see them and be suitably stunned. They are truly amazing, and worth the trip (an hour-long plane ride from Caracas and then a nine-hour drive got me there, so we are not talking an easy bit).
But we went further, helicoptering 50km from where we could drive, and got to see them from the air. This pic is Chimantá Tepui in the foreground, looking at a couple tepuis in the background that I don't know the names of. Doesn't do justice to what is was actually like being in the helicopter seeing this stuff, but maybe you get the idea of how grand this landscape is. And of note, there is a 1,000-foot cliff at the edge of the foreground, as that is not the top of a typical hill. While traveling back from caving in the Tepuis of Venezuela, we drove through a number of towns. And at one point, a rainbow appeared. So I took a photo, which is a pretty darn good photo, but don't remember the name of the town!
So here is a great shot that I don't have a location on right now. Back in the day, I owned three Buicks. Not a manufacturer usually associated with muscle cars, they did produce the GS/Gran Sport series that really did a hot quarter mile. This is a scan of an old photo I took. The car on the left is a 1973 Buick Centurion, a giant beast of a car with a GS-455 cubic inch engine with much power. The car on the right is a 1975 Buick Gran Sport, the end of the line for such models, with a 350 cubic inch V-8 that was underpowered for such a fine-looking vehicle. The car in the middle is a 1969 Buick GS-400 convertible with a most awesome 400 cubic inch engine that could really put you back in your seat.
I have driven trucks or truck-bodied SUVs for the last 15 years, and finding this photograph reminded me how fun cars with big engines are. Even though I have to admit that I was more of a "cruiser" than a "hot rod" driver. Here is a scan of the cover of the scientific journal Quaternary Research (Volume 77, Issue 3 May 2012). It is one of my pics from caving in Borneo, and it is a scan because this cover shot is not available to link to on the web. One of the entrances to Clearwater Cave, Sarawak, Borneo
I can only hope that this bit is legal to publish (it's my photo that they used with my permission, but I don;t have permission to put their journal cover here) And so starts a thing I plan to continue as time permits...my photos as published. |
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September 2021
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