This is a story from about 4 years ago when when 3 friends and I spent a month in Panama and Colombia after graduating from college. The only other piece of background info you need to know is that we were on an island off the coast of Panama, and found a local Guaymi indian who said that he and his brother could takes us into a cave there on the island. Of course, this sounded like a great thing to do.Well, we were able to come up with 3 hard-hats and a few flashlights. Of course there were 6 of us (4 gringos + 2 guides), and the flashlights were not water-proof (this is an example of "foreshadowing"). Feeling semi-prepared, we sat off on our adventure. We took a short boat ride through a small creek into the jungle, walked about 20 minutes to the entrance of the cave, and walked in.
The roof of the cave was covered in bats, and the floor of the cave was covered in water and bat droppings. During our first 10 minutes in the cave, we came across a caiman. I'm no animal expert, so I'll just say that these are like smaller versions of the alligators we see in Mississippi and Louisiana. Anyway, my friend Drew decided that he wanted to grab the caiman's tail.
