The Lost Kingdom

“Tenga cuidado,” (be careful) he warned. The store-keeper guided Russell and Jeanne Gurnee a short distance, just across the road from the parking lot. Sí, there were caves in the area, and sí, he could show them one. The man pulled back a curtain of vines and to their complete surprise, an enormous pit was revealed — at least 100-feet in diameter. The cavers from New Jersey gasped as they took in the immensity of what they were seeing. The edge of the mighty sinkhole was overhanging, and the jungle — perched precariously at its lip — leaned inward as if trying to get a better look. The couple crawled on their stomachs, getting as close to the edge as they dared. The pit appeared bottomless, but the telltale roar of rapids — El Rio Camuy — could be heard echoing, hundreds of feet below.

The year was 1958. The sight of Empalme Pit would mark the beginning of the Gurnee’s obsession with the Rio Camuy’s underground labyrinth. In time, they would organise and lead four major expeditions to the island, which would reveal the Camuy as being the third-largest underground river in the Western Hemisphere. Some of the caverns they discovered were so huge, their meagre lights could not sufficiently illuminate them; only bursts of flash-powder could produce enough lumens to momentarily reveal their scale.

Thanks to the Gurnees, the land above the caves was eventually purchased and the Parque Nacional de las Cavernas del Río Camuy was created. Lights were wired, boardwalks and stairs erected, even a trolley was installed. The park could support 1,500 tourists a day and was readily sold out. Prior to 2008, it was the most popular natural attraction on the island.

But over the years the park saw its fair share of tragedy. In 1968, Hector Bueso, aged 30, was on a guided tour of Tres Pueblos Sinkhole, when the river suddenly flooded and swept him into the downstream cave entrance; his body was never recovered. In 1975, Francis McKinney — an experienced caver who had been awarded the prestigious National Speleological Society’s Fellowship Award — fell 75-feet to his death while climbing out of the Ventosa entrance. In 1999, Francis Reyes, a caving instructor and guide, drowned during a flood pulse in Cueva Angeles (although technically not inside the park, Cueva Angeles is part of the larger Camuy cave system). In 2008, Socorro Elain Smith, a tourist from California, was killed by a falling rock while waiting with her husband to board the trolley out of Tres Pueblos Sinkhole. In 2011, an employee of a zipline operator, Jorge Len Rivera, aged 34, drowned while installing a cable across Tres Pueblos Sinkhole when a flood pulse swept him into the downstream cave entrance. In 2016, María Lisardi Vázquez, a 32-year-old zipline operator, lost her footing and fell over 400-feet into Tres Pueblos Sinkhole. The Sistema Camuy has claimed more lives than any other cave or cave system in Puerto Rico; most of them technical experts.

By 2009 the park was falling into disrepair. The long boardwalks which provided tourists access to cave entrances and observation decks were beginning to rot. Fallen trees and landslides blocked the roads. With astonishing speed, the jungle was reclaiming the land.

Then came the final blow. Maria, the category-5 hurricane which devastated the island in September of 2017. The amount of water which flooded the caverns was biblical. Tres Pueblos Sinkhole flooded to an instant lake with an estimated depth of over 200-feet. Many of the tourist facilities were destroyed or washed away. It appeared the cave’s large bat populations had either been wiped out or evacuated. The park was unceremoniously closed, and has been ever since.

The closure of one of Puerto Rico’s most popular natural attractions has been detrimental to the local community and the loss of state revenue for an already struggling economy has done little to help its future prospects. However, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has allocated 14 billion dollars in disaster relief since 2017. In August of 2020, an additional 84 million was allocated for recovery projects, and of that, 12 million was designated for repairs to parks and recreational facilities. Whether Camuy Park will receive any of that money is still to be decided.

The skin on my arms bubbled up and became infected. It looked like blisters from a third-degree burn and itched like hell

Like Jeanne and Russell before us, my partner Ashlee and I had become obsessed with the Camuy Caverns. We were residents of Puerto Rico, cavers too, and had spent many long weekends exploring the island’s karst. We had seen old, pixelated photographs of the park, and since our equipment was modern, we knew we could do better. We sensed an opportunity to photograph these magnificent caves the way the Gurnees saw them in 1958 – in their original state, before the guardrails. Perhaps our pictures could be used to garner attention and aid in the restoration of the park? It was a wonderful thought.

We tried a dozen times to request a permit from three different authorities but never received a response. The park entrance was guarded 24/7 and our Spanish wasn’t good enough for schmoozing. However, our research had shown there were other ways to legally access the caverns: areas outside of the park.

Blue Hole would be our first try at a backdoor. The Camuy begins as any other river which flows lazily across the surface of the land. Blue Hole is the point where the river burrows underground. We knew from the book Discovery at the Rio Camuy that the Gurnees had also employed this tactic. However, we wondered if anything had changed during their 60 year absence. Ashlee and I hiked to the river and walked downstream. We arrived at the base of a cliff and found a massive choke of logs, bamboo, and debris. Over a thousand years, every branch, twig, and leaf that had fallen into the river was piled here. It was the mother of all strainers. There were large driftwood logs 30 feet up into the trees, evidence that the area becomes a lake when flooded. To access the caves this way would require a great deal of explosives to remove the plug. How this curious spot ever got the name Blue Hole was a complete mystery to us.

Our next attempt would be through Cueva Humo – or Smoke Cave – so named for the great number of bats which can resemble smoke as they depart on their evening forays. I had a general idea where Humo was located but the information proved insufficient to say the least. The jungle was thick, nearly impenetrable. You could not go a step forward without first chopping a hole through the vegetation. There were ants everywhere, falling off the trees and down our collars and I soon became familiar with a little plant called Carrasco. Carrasco is related to poison sumac but its effects are much, much worse. Three days later I was in the hospital getting steroid injections. The skin on my arms bubbled up and became infected. It looked like blisters from a third-degree burn and itched like hell. Luckily for Ashlee, she did not have as severe a reaction as I did.

Our third try was the Camuy Resurgence – where the river reappears after travelling underground for several miles. We entered the cave with headlamps on and followed the river up-stream. The river was swift and in certain sections we’d swim against the current as fast as we could, momentarily clawing the wall to catch our breaths. In this fashion we pushed through several small chambers until our path was blocked, once again, this time by a large breakdown pile where the ceiling had collapsed. The water could squeeze through the cracks but we could not. We had failed… once again.

In our desperation we decided to join a caving club. It should be noted that I’m not a fan of clubs. Maybe because I’m an introvert. Or maybe it’s the associated fees I don’t like. Or maybe it’s because I’m wary of cults, and clubs seem to have a lot of similarities. Whatever the case, it had gotten to a point where we were spending too much time looking for caves and not enough time actually inside of caves. In fact, two weeks prior, we had spent an entire day looking for Cueva Perdida. The name translated is Lost Cave. After several hours of hacking at the jungle, promising my friends their efforts were worth the search, it slowly started to dawn on me how the cave got its name.

In desperation, I contacted Sociedad Espeleológica de Puerto Rico (SEPRI) hoping someone there spoke English. We met some very nice, interesting people and in time, made some very good friends. But that didn’t necessarily mean they were going to divulge the location of certain caves. Those, apparently, would need to be earned.

Our determination had been paying off elsewhere. We found the long lost Cueva Perdida after three tries and Cueva Humo after two. Neither had been visited since Hurricane Maria some three years earlier. We thoroughly explored 23 other cave systems on the island (often with friends from SEPRI) reopening the trails to each of them and gaining valuable experience along the way.

We had been dreaming of the Camuy Caverns for nearly two-years and it looked as though our employment on the island was coming to an end. We decided to refocus our attention entirely on Camuy. We had become cavers, after-all, and we were not about to leave Puerto Rico without seeing the most spectacular caves on the island.

In trying to find our way into the Camuy Caverns, Ashlee and I tried going through the front door at Blue Hole, we tried the side door at Cueva Humo, and we tried the backdoor at the Camuy Resurgence. The only entrance left seemed to be the chimney. La Ventosa – Spanish for ‘The Sucker’ – is an unassuming man-sized hole on the side of a hill. This small entrance leads to a balcony which overlooks a dizzying, 300-foot vertical drop to the Rio Camuy far below.