To cave or not to cave?

A month ago, I wrote a post about fear and how it's important to effectively deal with it and not let it ruin your experiences.  

I'm currently having a "face your fear" moment.  Soon we're heading to Lanquín in central Guatemala.  It's supposed to be beautiful and jungly and I've found a new little known hostel that I'm excited about.  The area's main attractions are a natural limestone bridge above a great swimming river and a series of bat caves.  Travelers go on day-long tours of these caves - swimming, walking, climbing, squeezing through holes, being pushed through holes by large amounts of gushing water... and there are heaps of bats.  And heaps of spiders.  Tarantulas, even.  

I'm reading about this experience on travel forums and in our guidebook, and I'm slowly, instinctively shaking my head side to side.  No.  No no no.  No thank you.  

Yes, that's a cool photo of a girl walking (or swimming?) through a cave with a candle.  It's a nice idea.  But no.  Can you imagine if that were me, in a swim suit up to my collar bone in water, only a candle lighting my way, and I saw a tarantula on the cave wall?  I would freak OUT.  Canyoning in New Zealand was challenging enough.  And that was in a relatively open space dappled in sunlight.  I'm just not my bravest when there's water involved.

Me being pushed down a canyon outside Wanaka, New Zealand.  This is an example of me freaking out in a mild "I'm sort of enjoying this" way... not to be mistaken for how I would react in a tarantula cave water scenario.

But I'm going to do it.  Not because I enjoy the stomach lurching, skin tingling sensation that accompanies the thought of me being submerged in pitch black cave water with tarantulas, but because I know I'll feel accomplished when it's over.  I didn't want to bike down the world's most dangerous road at first, and I ended up wiping out, destroying my knee, and being miserable most of the way down the mountain.  But I'm glad I did it.  I have a cool scar and at the very bottom of the mountain I got to play with baby monkeys.

If I knew there were baby animals (or some form of cake) at the end of the cave tour, I'd definitely do it.  As it is, I'm publishing this post in case I find out there aren't puppies or desserts included in the tour and in case I'm tempted to spend my day reading in a hammock instead.  Man up, Brown.  Go down the caves.  

Eeek.

Spider and cave photos taken from a guy's recent blog about Semuc Champey.

Fighting fear

Fear. It's an interesting and tricky phenomenon. I did a lot of thinking about fear during college, maybe in response to terrorism and politics, or overseas adventures, or books defending the goodness of humanity and strangers... probably in response to all these things. And I became passionate about the importance of fighting fear. Don't let fear control you, don't let fear keep you from trying difficult things, that sort of thing.

Fighting fear felt poetic for awhile. I jumped out of a plane and helped a diabetic drug addict in a rough Atlanta neighborhood. I drove six hundred miles by myself five months after I got my driver's license. I went to South America. But then, and this happened in a matter of months, I began to fear less tangible things, like myself and failure and the future. That kind of fear has proven much harder to fight.

Anyway, I don't know if fearing myself activated my previously dormant fear center or what, but recently I have experienced more ear ringing palm sweating fear than ever before. Some of you have heard about our camping trip in Yellowstone. Hannah heard a bear (or something) circling our tent and woke me with a terrified barely audible whisper: "Stop breathing. There's a bear." I think the experience will make a good short story some day. For now, suffice it to say that night was the first time I felt I'd come to terms with death. Paralyzed in my sleeping bag, unable to control my alarmingly rapid pulse, I thought calmly to myself, "You might die very soon. But that's okay." For weeks, even in north Alabama where there are no bears, my stomach lurched every time I heard a rustle in the woods.

For the first time in my life I was scared of an upcoming trip as I read warning after warning of armed robbery, rape, and bus hijackings in Guatemala. I was on high alert in the poorly lit parking garage of Guatemala City's international airport, and my heart pounded hard when it occurred to me our driver could be kidnapping us. Here in Nueva Alianza, I've woken up to mysterious noises around the hotel. Sometimes I hear distant voices and remember our lockless door and think about machetes. And don't get me started on all of the insects and critters in this place. Bright green buzzing flies dive bomb me when I brush my teeth. Cockroaches live in the fork and spoon drawers. Mice race across the attic floor at night and scurry through the kitchen during lunch. Once I was lying on the floor fixing my bunk bed when an enormous black scorpian crawled right under my nose.

Luckily I've developed a coping mechanism for creepy crawly things: I've taught myself not to look for them. When I shower or open drawers, I actively choose not to focus my eyes on any walls or corners. I calmly go about my business, and if I notice an animate dark mass that may or may not be a tarantula, I ignore it. "It's probably not a tarantula," I say to myself. Ignorance is bliss. I don't want to know. The other night, Hannah and Dan insisted on talking about an awful spider that was crawling across the living room ceiling. I refused to look and managed to forget about it. Later, as I was stretching, my eyes accidentally found the spider on a beam above my feet. Shudder. It took five minutes of disciplined thinking, but I managed to forget it again. The same night we heard creaking floor boards outside and a few startling BANGs, either recreational gun shots or oranges falling on the tin roof. Though I knew we were probably hearing dogs and fruit, I still felt uneasy. But I didn't dwell on the noises and focused on our James Bond movie instead.

On multiple occasions people have asked, "aren't you scared of anything?" Yes, I am. Ask my dad about the time I almost screamed and clawed my way out of a Disney World water ride. Sharks, tsunamis, spiders, and the idea of armed assault freak me out. I don't do horror movies. During this past year alone, I've discovered all sorts of new scary things. But I've also discovered that even my worst fears can be fought. It's always been worth it.

To be honest, if I didn't insist on fighting fear I would be back in the States by now. Good grief. Hannah just reported she was washing her face, looked down and saw a rat chasing a grasshopper under the bathroom door.

On a separate note, my friend Dan just got back to Alabama after two weeks in Guatemala. He visited the capital, Antigua, and then spent a few days here in the community. You can read about and watch his adventures here.