travelog 1



Deep Caves, Narrow Passages



Early in the morning we enter the post office in White's City (here they are not sure if it's written White's City or Whites City - once it's one way, then it's the other way). White's City is a little village, a tourist trap, not more than a gas station, a restaurant and a 1-million-dollar museum (we don't want to visit it - it just smells like a trap), a Best Western-Motel/Campground, two or three souvenir shops and enough parking lots for the hard, busy times of the year. Everything is a little bit kitschy, presented in "wildwest-manner", not our style at all. We pick up our mail, the aunt in the post office is really unfriendly. We try to check our e-mail in the motel and try to reach a telephone-plug over there. But all promises (money, money, money) and all our nice tries to convince don't help. We may only check our e-mail when we rent a room for a night - simple excuse. We think, it's too much for only using the telephone-line for a few minutes.



We leave for Carlsbad Caverns National Park. We meet the real Chihuahuan desert. Here the plants can grow without having the risk of being eaten by cattle. And there are no fences any more... How beautiful! We try to find a nice person in the visitor center and in the adjacent restaurant/shop who might let us check our e-mail. But no one understands these needs - that makes me angry and so we have to swear a bit...



Julia books an adventure cave tour - "Lower Caves". We join the group at 1pm, dressed warm, well padded, with gloves and 4 AA-batteries (to illuminate the speleologist helmet flashlight). We were at the right place at the right time...



At first there are only 6 booked participants, but suddenly another 5 guys arrive, so that we work out to be 11 (!) people plus 2 rangers - one for the head and one for the tail of the line. We are transported by lift/escalator around 750 feet (250 meters) down below the surface. We land in a typical American invention: a fast-food restaurant. For Europeans an impossible thing. The rangers send the participants for the last time to the restrooms and most of them do that obediently. Then it gets tough. Everyone has to climb down a slippery slope by rope - always with the shout "on rope" while grabbing the rope and with the shout "off rope" when leaving it. Several ladders have to be climbed down - the well-disposed reader would guess correctly - with the shouts "on ladder" and "off ladder" - to find ourselves again in a dark hall with a slippery uneven floor, walking in the gleam of the helmet flashlights in single file.



A dark, very calm, uncanny world receives us. From time to time we hear a drop of water dripping on the surface of a pool. To illuminate a part of the dark world you have to stop - otherwise you lose your step. And where you send your light, there are crevices, deep holes, dark tubes, small lakes, stalactites and stalagmites, columns, nicely built with little terraces - grown over eons of time. There are cave pearls lying here and there very slowly grown out of dripping water full of diluted calcium. Sometimes they are as big as chicken eggs. The stagnant water in the pools shimmer light green and is absolutely clear. Sometimes there are objects hanging down from the ceiling, looking like icicles or sometimes like curtains, sometimes there are objects covered with little white bowls - which look similar to popcorn. We admire everything around us, groping in the dark in Indian file through big halls, squeezing our bodies through narrow passages and once we have the opportunity to crawl through a tight hole (a preview to the caving tour Julia is planning for the next Sunday). On a very narrow spot all participants have to sit down on the wet cave floor, all lights switched off, so that everyone can experience on his own how dark and silent it is so deep below the surface and how important light sources are to stay alive.



The absolute black surrounds us and is a real experience - and you realize how important also a good helmet is in these caves. On every edge there is the possibility to hit your head. So we don't move at all...



You also lose the feeling of time, which is nothing spectacular on earth's surface in these depths. Three hours had passed when we climbed out to daylight - one experience richer.



One day later we visit for 5 hours the part of Carlsbad Caverns which is open to the public. Because there are not so many people traveling around at this time of the year, the parking lots are empty and that's why there are also no crowds walking around in the interiors of the earth. One reason in addition to stay and to enjoy the optical impressions.



Funny detail: at this caving tour we meet a young man whose family ownes a campground in Carlsbad. Business-minded, we ask him for "special rates" and now we pay only half the normal price. Ask and you shall receive...



January 1998



Julia Etter & Martin Kristen