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THE CALL OF RIO LA VENTA Tullio Bernabei Our exploratory expeditions to Chiapas, Mexico, came about in partnership with the Association in the early 1990s. They weren’t the first; rather, they were the fruit of various missions carried out in the ’80s by the Circolo Speleologico Romano. In January 1981, we came to find out about the downstream parts of the canyon incised by Rio la Venta, navigating the river upstream: on those long days spent in a cave overlooking the river, waiting for a boat to come and take us back to civilisation, with attendant “Mexican” delays, we had the idea of exploring the geographical marvel of which we were only getting to know the final part. Waiting for us upstream were around 80 km of canyon, about which nobody knew anything, aside from what the faded aerial photos showed: a sort of long serpent, at some points very narrow, which meandered through equally unknown karst forests. In the event, we would have to wait nine long years to realise that dream, which then triggered numerous others and which, to this day, continues to make everyone dream – not just us but also the new explorers following the same route. Although cavers’ attention has been focused on it for several years now, Mexico remains a far-off country, and
our association has a multitude of speleological objectives, right across the world. Not surprisingly, then, the exploratory potential of the canyon gradually faded from view over the course of the past decade, and the number of full descents completed was very low. For this reason, in March 2018 we decided to travel once again along Rio la Venta with eyes both old and new, in search of unexplored caves. In reality, finding new caves was not a difficult challenge, because there have always been a plethora of holes peeping out along the two sides of the canyon, which account for a total of 160 km of limestone rock face. Nevertheless, a while back we stopped looking for them, locating and evaluating them with a view to future explorations. This, therefore, together with the identification and description of all of the springs that bring water to the canyon from the two sides, was the aim of the descent carried out from 13 to 18 March, 2018, by a large group of Italian and Mexican speleologists. Many of us did not know Rio la Venta, and as such it was a highly significant experience. The descent, as always, was carried out using different techniques based on the feasibility and the water level: on foot, transpor-
Transporting materials along the Little Landslide (Piccola Frana), Rio La Venta Canyon
