Oy. Today dawned early. And yet, I managed to wake up 10 minutes BEFORE the alarm was set to go off…  

I rousted Matt at 5:00 am and we sat and drank coffee. At one point, I noticed the sun was coming up and we were treated to quite the spectacular sunrise. SO pretty! Then we had some more avocado toast for breakfast, got our shit together, and headed out. 

The drive to Utuado is… Something. The first two thirds are fairly normal highway, and then you make a right turn (that’s so tight and hidden that we missed it), and it’s on. Windy, twisty, turny, narrow, with one lane sections every so often… It’s like combining the back roads of eastern Kentucky and the Red River Gorge with the dips and single lane bridges of the Road to Hana… Doesn’t help that we were half asleep, either. 

In any case, we made it to the Tanamà River Adventures building without incident, and stupid early. We chilled for a bit and  waited for the rest of the people on our tour to arrive. When we were all there, we got helmets and life jackets, loaded into the van, and were off. 

Talk about a ROAD. I’m not sad we didn’t have to drive ourselves to THAT trailhead. It was as wide as the van, and precariously perched on the side if a mountain… So steep that you couldn’t see over the hood of the car – going up OR down. And our guide was honking the horn like made to make sure people knew we were coming. The adventure had certainly begun. 

We piled out of the van and started up the trail. It was fairly steep, with some up first and then some down over rocky, rooty, slippery red clay stuff. A cool thing our guide told us – there are so many caves, with so many bats, that there are very few mosquitoes. That was true, actually. And SO NICE!!!

We saw a cave with a huge drop off down to a river. I think that was the top of the Cueva del Arco. We hiked around a bit more down to the river, then swam upstream to another cave that we were able to walk back into. As our guide (Mariel) shined her light around, we could see bats flying around. Pretty cool. We swam at that hole for a bit then moved on. 

We floated downriver a bit to the opposite end of the Cueva del Arco, and spent some time playing in the current and the water there. At one point, Mariel found a kind of rock whose sediment is used for face masks and is really good for your skin, and we all turned our faces black for a bit with the stuff. It actually felt really good to rub into my skin then wash it off. 

Eventually, it was time to go back, so we reversed our steps, got back to the van, took that crazy road back to the building, and it was over. And we were SOAKED. We had changes of clothes, but my dumb ass (wrongly) assumed I would dry off before hitting the restaurant for lunch. Oops. I left there looking like I’d peed my pants… 

Lunch was delicious, at least. We’d asked Mariel about places to eat and she suggested Sabores, just down in Utuado. I had the carne frita with tostones, Matt had pechuga de pollo milanesa with mofongo, and they were both really good. So was my lemonade, which was basically lime juice squeezed in water – so tart and so good!

We decided we were there, so we should take a look at Utuado proper. We’re really good at going by places and not actually stopping to see them. Not that town was much to write home about. It was the usual super tight streets with cool buildings and such. Not a disappointment, but not the most spectacular thing I’ve ever seen, either. 

We realized that from there, it was quicker (not to mention an easier drive) to just take the big highway home instead of that twisty mess. It meant skipping a waterfall or two, but we were so exhausted that we really didn’t care. Matt was so tired he fell asleep at a red light…

Thankfully, we made it back just fine. I took a shower, and we both laid down for a bit… and all of a sudden it was an hour and a half later. I had a hell of a time waking up from that one. 

We got up, got dressed, and went to dinner at Mi Familia pizza place, the one that we’d see across a valley and barely found because it was way down the hill. The food was great, the beer was decent. 

After dinner we tried to catch sunset back at the Beach House, but the clouds just kind of got darker. We had a couple drinks there, anyway, and then went to the grocery. We needed water desperately… The tap water here is pretty gross. 

Then back to the apartment, and much needed sleep. 

Here’s the video: