Friday, November 20, 2015.
Today is our first day in Chile operating with the full team. We plan a visit to one of the simplest and nearest caves in San Pedro, the Cueva de Chulacao. It is a cave about 1 km long, characterized by a wide variety of environments: about 2 meters wide meandering tunnels, passages in salt even more than 10 meters, access shafts (skylight), conduct also more narrow, and a large collapse hall.
This cavity is an ideal training ground for practicing in the strange forms of the caves in the salt, but also to test the Leica HDS7000, the precious technological instrument kindly provided by the company Gruppo Servizi Topografici (G.S.T. snc) of Reggio Emilia. The exceptional rains of last March more than the plains of Atacama did also flourish this cave with the formation of white eccentric made of salt. In some areas of the cave is possible to observe the level reached by the underground river, up to 5 or 6 meters above the ground level. The cave walls are literally plastered with plant remains transported by water, but also from a new form of underground deposition consists of small millimetric white balls: the “paleoystyrene”. In fact, the recent flood has also drained the modern (in)civilization materials. The floor is entirely covered with a layer of salt that looks like carasau bread, while in various corners have grown even half a meter long stalactites. Looking in detail on the walls and on the stalactites have grown very white hair extremely fragile, even a few centimeters long. Our photographers have indulged more than the bizarre concretions, making a painstaking work to capture as much detail as possible of this crystalline world. _09At the same time a team has been dedicated to the acquisition using the laser scanner, experiencing very detailed scans, sequences of measures in line, in areas from a few meters to the great hall of collapse, with the aim to test the durability of the batteries and the real potential of this technique in describing the underground areas. Jo De Waele The expedition is sponsored by the Italian Speleological Society, and has the support of the Gruppo Servizi Topografici (GST snc) of Reggio Emilia (laser scanner), and of Intermatica (Satellite telephony), Ferrino (Clothing and outdoor equipment), Dolomite (mountain shoes), Amphibious (Dry bags), Scurion (lighting LEDs), Tiberino (freeze-dried foods ready to cook). Participate for La Venta: Jo De Waele, Riccardo De Luca, Umberto Del Vecchio, Marco Mecchia, Fulvio Iorio, Alfredo Brunetti, Laura Sanna, Andrea Cabras, Roberto Ferrara, Norma Damiano, Marco Vattano.