This photo I took at a popular tourist cave in the Alta Gracia region, it’s the entrance which decends about 30 metres to an underground pool of water that is another 8 metres deep and extends underground for 200 metres all filled with water. I had a chance to swim in there and will post more photos of this at a later date. What is fascinating about this cave is the fact that on first entering and descending to the water level, it is not easy to see that in fact one is peering through crystal clear pure water! The rock formation easily visible below! This particular cave would not have been inhabited.
There are numerous extraordinary caves on the island of Hispañola or the Dominican Republic many of which contain relics and artwork of the Taínos culture. How did the Taínos people arrive on in the islands? Two schools of thought have emerged regarding the origin of the indigenous people of the Caribbean. One group contends that the ancestors of the Taínos came from the center of the Amazon Basin, subsequently moving to the Orinoco valley. From there they reached the West Indies by way of what is now Guyana and Venezuela into Trinidad, proceeding along the Lesser Antilles all the way to Cuba and the Bahamian archipelago. Evidence that supports this theory includes the tracing of the ancestral cultures of these people to the Orinoco Valley and their languages to the Amazon Basin.
The alternate theory, known as the circum-Caribbean theory, contends that the ancestors of the Taínos diffused from the Colombian Andes. Julian H. Steward, the theory’s originator, suggested a radiation from the Andes to the West Indies and a parallel radiation into Central America and into the Guianas, Venezuela and the Amazon Basin.
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- Swimming in 8 metres of water
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- To the left of this photo is the main body of fresh water.
Swimming in 8 metres of water
That place looks so spooky lol..