The Caveman cometh

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