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OCTOBER 2009 SAIPAN BOTANICAL GARDENS AND KELABERA CAVE

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Here we are at the entrance of Kalabera Cave. To the left (you will see in the next photo) is an ancient petroglyph. Straight ahead and to your right it becomes very slick and drops down about 30 feet or so fairly quickly.
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Here we are at the entrance of Kalabera Cave. To the left (you will see in the next photo) is an ancient petroglyph. Straight ahead and to your right it becomes very slick and drops down about 30 feet or so fairly quickly.

openingkalaberacave

  • I guess if this were a white lily, or lotus, this would be the mythical birth place of the Buddha, right?
  • Not a great video, but only takes 1 minute, 40 seconds. Just experimenting and playing with video. Sorry, Tom! Maybe you can just listen to the song, which is indeed symbolic.
  • Some type of orchid. It rained pretty hard just after I got to the Botanical Gardens, so everything was clean and covered with water droplets. Notice that you have two flowers, one behind the other. Look closely at the water droplet hanging to your lower left. You will see a closer shot of it next.
  • You see the rear orchid flower in the water droplet!
  • I'm not sure what these are. Well, I know they are flowers, but not sure what kind.
  • Somehow it just seems like those two signs should never go together. I strongly believe that they either need to do what is necessary to make it safe or close it off (the tree house). Seems even stranger when one considers the percentage of people coming through here who don't read English (at least as their primary language). It requires due care even for me to safely negotiate this thing any more. Very sad that they have allowed it to run down like this. Really needs replacement of lots of boards, for weight bearing areas, safety railings, etc. I think that safety folks would shut something like this down in any one of the 50 states. Otherwise, the Botanical Gardens is a pretty cool place. You can tell that they are apparently barely holding on, however. A restaurant which no longer serves food, fountains now forever dry, a tree house which is dangerous and should be closed, another (smaller) tree house which IS closed, etc. Like LOTS of things in the CNMI: TREMENDOUS potential, somehow unrealized.
  • Different kind of orchid.
  • Untitled photo
  • Not sure what kind of flower this is.
  • Close up of the previous flower.
  • Looking in Mr. Roosevelt's ear to give you some size perspective on this little flower. I'm sure that you are all aware that Mr. Roosevelt is the ONLY U.S. President to serve four terms.......
  • Here we are at the entrance of Kalabera Cave. To the left (you will see in the next photo) is an ancient petroglyph. Straight ahead and to your right it becomes very slick and drops down about 30 feet or so fairly quickly.
  • The figure you see scratched into the rock just to your left from the top of the sign was created by the ancient Chamorro. It is thought to depict a person in a boat. Inside the main part of the cave is evidence that people frequented Kalabera as long as 1,200 years BEFORE CHRIST. I have not heard an estimate to the age of this particular boat etching. I can probably guess with much more accuracy when Dennis loved Tomoko and James loved Jave. Seems a shame that people deface such things. On the other hand, who knows for sure that the folks who etched the boat weren't just graffiti artists who came a bit earlier?
  • Now we have stepped inside the upper part of the cave. The ladder to your left is a recent addition which allows archeologists access to the floor, maybe 30 feet or so below us. Apparently, Calavera is Spanish for "skull." The formation you see in the distance, barely to left of center, is supposedly responsible for the name (changed through time to Kalabara Cave). This photo does a very poor job of showing size and distance. The skull is probably 40 or 50 feet away from us. The chamber we are looking into, according to Wikipedia, is about 60 feet tall. It's a much steeper and slick cliff between where I am standing and the bottom than what it looks like here (I was standing on a safe spot, but would not have wanted to step any closer). Photo taken without flash, and with no tripod (although I may have been steadying the camera against a rock a bit).
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