To The Bat Cave Ryan!

"Dad, wait up!" I heard Ryan call out.  

He was several feet behind me, but I was moving fast until I came to a dead end. 

"Lets go back.  I'm starting to get a little scared" he continued with a slight panic in his voice. 

"It's okay buddy", I assured him over my shoulder. "We'll head back."

The problem was we HAD BEEN headed back, but none of the cave looked familiar. It was a simple cave system with only one main route in and a couple of off shoots accessed by climbing down or up so I hadn't antipated any trouble navigating back.  However, everything looked different going back than it had coming in. Ryan had joked about dropping breadcrumbs on the way in. Now I wished we had. 

I kept outwardly calm, but inside the panic was starting to rise. I only had been at the dead end for a few seconds, but my brain had already started to think through the calculations/ramifications or getting lost inside a remote cave in the mountains of a small Cretan village that likely saw very little foot traffic as it was not on any TripAdvisor must see list. In fact, we had only heard about it from speaking with a local woman at a mountain coffee shop. 

On the negative side, we had no food or water with us (why would we as we hadn't anticipated exploring a cave system when we set out that day) and I did not have the flashlight with me that I usually kept in my bag just in case. 

In the plus column, Francesca was outside with the girls and knew we were inside exploring.

In the negative column, we had Francesca's phone with us to use as a light source which means we would not be able to call her if we got in trouble.  

On the plus side, as mentioned, it was a relatively small cave system and we would certainly be able to quickly retrace our steps and search for the way out. Unless, of course, our cell phones, which were providing our only light source in an otherwise pitch black cave, ran out of batteries first.  I glanced down at mine, worried because I had been filming a lot of video with the flash on, but to my relief I still had a solid 76% left. 

Just as I was completing the accounting of our situation, I heard Ryan shreek as a bat flew over our heads.  Presumably it was the same bat that had been screeching at me inside the narrow passage way I had been exploring minutes before and the reason I had started to head back in the first place.

I watched the bat fly through what I had thought was the dead end and disappear. I quickly followed and saw the gap it had flown through. While it was too small for me or Ryan to fit through, it was wide enough for me to see the light coming from the cave entrance up ahead.

At that point I recognized it as the way we had come in.  We were not lost after all.  We were on the right path, it was just that the cave features looked different from this direction. I let out a big sigh.

As Ryan caught up to me I calmly lead us around to the larger hole that we had crawled through fifteen minutes earlier, past the angry bat who was still screeching out his displeasure with her uninvited visitors. 

When we crawled out of the entrace we saw the girls standing outside waiting impatiently. 

"Come on guys, we have to go to the bathroom!" they cried in unison. "Didn't you hear Mommy calling to you guys in the cave?"

In fact, we had not heard them at all desipte being only about 100 feet or so inside the cave.  That was something I had put in the plus column - being able to shout to Francesca and follow the sound of her voice. Not that it mattered now, but I mentally pushed that one over to the negative column. :)

Truthfully, I don't believe we were in any real danger and I think it's fun to explore in areas that are not completely santized for tourists ensuring their complete safety.  Assessing the acceptible amount of risk is a daddy's job.  Although I suspect Francesca might feel differently if I asked her. 

What we had been exploring is called Krionerida's Cave near the village of Vafes.  There is another decent sized cave there called Kalamato Cave as well as church, called St. Ioannis Erimitis, buillt into the side of the mountain which was pretty impressive.  Below are some of the photo highlights. 

I also put together a video from inside the cave as Ryan and I explored.