"Travis." said a soft voice. "It is time to go."
I quickly opened up my eyes to a faintly bright surrounding around me. When I got up turned around, I realized right away that both Billy and Jessica holding their flashlights, and had been fully ready to continue the journey. Whereas I, I was still just woken up and maybe even had yet a complete control on my consciousness. However, as soon as I looked at my watch and saw that the time was already 04.02 p.m., I had both my eyes completely opened up in an instant.
"Right, it is already past four." I said in a hurry as I quickly picked up my t-shirt again.
It was not completely dried, but at least my t-shirt was not wet anymore that I had to worry I would catch a bad cold if I wore it. I first removed my body armor, and put the t-shirt on before wearing the armor again in a rush. As soon as I finished, I stood up and picked up my backpack again, before telling the rest of the others that I was also already good to go.
"Well, let us go?" I said to both Billy and Jessica.
"Of course." he responded, somehow did not seem to be in any pain whatsoever anymore. "Do you mind if I lead the line again this time?"
"All yours." I said, as I gestured with my right hand and let him lead us.
With that said, we finally began to move on again to our next checkpoint, which was the waterfall before the next jungle. It might be already a little late in the afternoon, but at the bright side all of us seemed to have our stamina back again. I would have said that it was a very worthy trade, for it would be far riskier for us to be low on stamina in the middle of a jungle than to actually traverse the jungle fully awake and alerted in the middle of the night.
Also, instead of walking back into the jungle and followed the edge of the gorge earlier, we decided to follow the river instead since Billy confirmed that the direction of the river was also apparently heading to the direction of the waterfall after all. It was also at that moment when I took out my flashlight again and decided to look at the cave with more details.
First of all, the higher ground in which we were currently walking on was quite wide that two persons can actually walk together there since it must have the width of at the very least seven feet. However, it was indeed still narrower compared to the lower ground where the river was flowing where it might have the width of around eleven feet. I could not guess the depth of the river unfortunately, since my flashlight could not see the river floor.
The next thing that I noticed was that the hanging roots above us seemed to get more and more abundant the deeper the cave went. Not only that, many of the roots were actually very long that some of them even touched and got dipped into the river, while some others covered the higher ground a little. Few spots that I looked on the ceiling literally had some roots gotten entangled together, and it made me wonder if they were actually belonged to a single large-sized tree or rather few different trees.
I also came to spot few holes with light from the outside on the ceiling for once in a while, most likely indicating that it was originally a spot of a tree with its roots slowly decaying due to overwatering by the river below it. It was also then when I could guess that the distance between the cave ceiling to the higher ground surface might be around nine feet.
"I wonder if there are actually more trees collapsed outside because of overwatering." I said.
"Who knows." Jessica responded. "Although, as far as I have looked, maybe some long time ago in the past the river of this cave used to have a much higher level…"
"What makes you think that?" I asked her, curious.
"Take a closer look at the wall beside us." she said as she turned her head towards the right direction. "I am actually still not really sure, but apparently some of them looked like they are actually giant roots."
Jessica explained that the size of the roots factored on many things, and one of the main factors is indeed water. In order to survive, a tree root would adjust itself naturally so that the amount of water taken would not excess or lacking. The larger the size of the root would mean that the amount water and any other factors needed would also be greater. Since there was not only just one giant roots there, it could be an indication that in the past, the whole ground of the cave might have been covered in water.
"But should not that mean the tree right above these roots would also collapse since they are now lacking in water?" I asked her again.
"Supposedly, yes." she replied right away. "Unless, if these roots are in fact still going deeper underground and somewhere below this surface, there is also enough water to supply them."
'No wonder the sizes of the trees outside are all gigantic…' I thought to myself.
If we had not come to this part of the jungle, I might not witness it for myself how far and massive nature can be. Somehow, somewhere deep down inside me I thought that maybe it was for the best after all that the jungle had not been explored in the past, since exploration like that might not end well for the sustainability of the jungle.
"Heads up, there is a light ahead of this cave." Billy said shortly after.
"The exit?" I asked him.
"Most likely." he answered.
I noticed the presence of the light right after Billy's words. Strangely enough, I also saw that the river stream had then become a little faster than before. With every several steps that we took I felt like the light slowly began to be get bigger and more vivid, and after about ten minutes of walking along the cave we finally reached the exit.
I finally realized why the river stream became faster. It was because the end of the cave was actually a short waterfall, with the distance between the cave river surface to the river outside maybe only about sixteen to seventeen feet. Aside from that, I also noticed right away that the downpour had then subsided, and the weather was only raining a little. With the sun finally emerged again in the sky, I could see the mentioned waterfall somewhere in the distance from inside the cave.
"Is that, the same waterfall that you mentioned earlier?" I asked Billy as I pointed to the direction of the waterfall.
"Yes…" he said, after a short moment of silence.
"Then we have technically reached our checkpoint…" I said as I relieved a little.
Just then, another question occurred to me. How would we get across the river below us and enter the second jungle from there? Should we swim across the river after we climbed down the cliff below us, or just jump right away into the river as near to the river shore as possible and continue from there? I quickly forwarded those thoughts to both Billy and Jessica. It turned out that she was also not sure, but Billy had another suggestion.
He said that we should first try to climb across the cave cliff and then down to the ground across the river. The option to actually jump into the river right away would be the very last option should there was no cracked surface whatsoever to hang and grab to. He did however, reminded us to just take it slowly since it would most likely be slippery due to the presence of mosses.
Just like before, the first one to climb was me. I first hung on to the cave ground, and searched for any forms of cracks on the cliff below it. To my surprise, I could fairly easily spot one and thus I could begin to start climbing across the cliff. It did not take long for both Billy and Jessica before they began to follow me.
I was not sure if it was only my imagination or not, but I felt like instead of going straight in line, I felt like I was going across diagonally down, which was actually a better thing since it would save the trouble of descending later on. Just when I felt like there would be no challenge before us in climbing across the cliff, one suddenly emerged before me.
It was when I could no longer find any cracked surface near me anymore that it made me stuck at the same spot for some time. Both of them had even reached right before me when I still had yet to find one. I even began to think if I should just jump right away down to the river since it was already shorter than the initial height, but the distance between me and the surface below me was maybe still around ten to eleven feet away.
"No more cracked surfaces?!" Billy asked in a louder tone since it was noisy because of the waterfall sound. "Should we jump now?!"
I still insisted myself to look around before giving the final option of jumping down. Luckily in doing so, I noticed that there was actually something else that I might be able to use to get across – some vine plants hanging just beside me. I then looked down to see how far below the plant had grown, and realized shortly after that it might had grown as far as five to six feet below me.
"Wait!" I responded to him. "I need to make sure something first."
I was pretty anxious and nervous in releasing my grips on the cracked surfaces at first, but nevertheless I ended up going all the way and grabbed the vine plant hard before slipping down a little. I held my breath and closed my eyes for a moment, thinking that I might be falling down straight to the river below since the vine had become broken off because of my weight. However, as I opened my eyes slowly the vine plant was in fact, able to hold my body weight.
I slowly reached the plant right next to me, then the one next to it, until I reached the last straw of the vine plant. I proceeded by carefully descending myself down to the end of the vine plant, and when I finally had myself hanging on the end of the straw by using both of my hands, I was perhaps only four or five feet away from the water surface right below me.
I then looked up towards Billy's direction and gave him three nods, signaling him that he could follow the exact same route, before I released myself and landed on the river below. I might fail to keep myself dry, but at least I did not have to make my whole body wet again by jumping down to the river like I had suggested earlier. When I stood up, the water only reached my thighs, which I believed was much better than having to get myself completely wet. It took almost fifteen minutes before the two of them landed down, and by then it was already 04.40 p.m.
"Well that was far smoother." Billy said as he laughed.
"All thanks to your suggestions." I said as I smiled and nodded to him.
The rather warm atmosphere was short lived however, since I quickly made all of us to raise our alerts again as we were about to enter the wilderness just before us again. All three of us readied our firearms as we stepped our feet into the jungle, keeping an eye out for any signs of possible imminent threat. There might be less obstacles ahead of us in terms of terrains, but I also believed that we were going deeper into a more dangerous area, and that we should be fully on our guards…