Spelunk!

Calvin: I think today I'll go spelunking.
Hobbes: There aren't any caves around here.
Calvin: Who needs caves? (throws large rock in puddle: SPELUNK!)

We couldn't find any puddles (it's quite dry here), so we decided to visit the local caves, Las Grutas de Garcia, instead. My camera doesn't deal well with dim light, but I did my best. Also, the caves are on one side of a valley surrounded by mountains, so I took a bunch of pictures of them too. Pretty much wherever you go around here, you see drop-dead mountain vistas, sort of like Margene, only the mountains don't look like hers, either, nor is there much water around here. Once you get outside Monterrey, in fact, there's not much of anything except miles and miles of mountains (it's dry here).

Anyhow, we missed the turn for the caves the first time (there are many large signs on the highway saying things like "keep seat belts fastened" and "turn headlights on in fog"; the signs giving actual useful information are considerably smaller and easier to miss, affording us the opportunity for a scenic tour of a whole lotta nowhere and nothing but lots of lovely mountains — did I mention that it's dry here?), but not the second time. The cable-car ride was much less scary than I'd feared based on lurid descriptions from fellow wedding guests.


The cave tour took about an hour.


Grant was a bit disappointed that the tour was heavy on formations that resembled various animals and plants (the Gorilla Head, the Camel, the Christmas Tree) and, as far as we could tell given our extremely limited grasp of Spanish, light on geology. The caves themselves were pretty spectacular, though.





While waiting for the cable car back down I took pictures of mountains...


more mountains...


and some extremely determined trees.


There were also lots of flowers; these were my favorites, looking as if a swarm of butterflies had alighted on a bush. (Yeah, they're fuchsia. So sue me.)


Today we may try to find a nearby canyon and/or the open-air market. Wish us luck.