The Caveman cometh
By: Alan Warild
| June-24-2009
2008 Lifetime of Adventure awardee Alan Warild shares his latest underworld exploits.
No matter where you start, it’s a long way to Madre de Dios. The island sits
in the barely visited region of southern Chile, where the roaring forties do
battle with the furious fifties. The nearest permanent settlement is the tiny
indigenous fishing village of Puerto Eden, 11 hours north by boat. To the east
is the south Patagonian icecap and to the west is the South Pacific Ocean. With
about 10 m of rain falling annually on the coastal fringe, it’s one of the
wettest places on earth and thanks to the wind, the wet stuff doesn’t fall, it
comes at you horizontally and ice cold.
Water and limestone are the reasons I’m here. I’ve visited three times
before, in 2000, 2001 and 2006, and during these trips was part of a team that
discovered the deepest cave in Chile (Perte du Futur, 376m) and a cave
containing rare rock art of the Kaweshkar (the island’s only permanent
residents, who lived there for 6000 years until the 1950s). In all, we explored
and mapped almost 20 km of caves, but in truth, only scratched the surface of
this “other” world.
My return in early 2008 was fuelled by the prospect of new discoveries.
Formed by the remains of a coral-reef system more than 300 million years old,
the western half of Madre de Dios is the largest area of cave-bearing limestone
this far south. Just like the landscape, the caves here are cold, wild and wet –
water levels rise and fall rapidly in response to rain. During the two-month
expedition, our international team of speleologists and scientists discovered
and then plumbed the 240 m depths of Sumidero la Bas, a stream sink (cave with a
watercourse running through it). Unlike many of the other caves here, it had
enough room away from the water to enable us to explore without risk of drowning
– we got wetter walking between camp and the cave’s entrance than within the
cave itself. In total, we mapped 8.5 km of routes in five new caves.
Most unexpected, however, were the traces of human habitation we found on
Madre: abundant bird bones and mussel shells – indications that people brought
food to this inaccessible area long ago. Even more surprising was a wall – the
remains of a hut – built entirely of whalebone.
Madre de Dios is of immense value to science, a reference area as yet
undamaged and largely untouched by humans. Formations in the caves are being
used to measure past climates and the limestone bears records of past sea
levels. The cave system also provides habitat for a number of unique bug
species, which appear to have taken refuge there since before the last Ice Age,
10,000-plus years ago.
Planned for 2010, my next expedition to Madre de Dios is eagerly
anticipated.
Source: Australian Geographic Jan - Mar 2009