Go Abseiling on the Sima de las Cotorras

The Sima de las Cotorras is a pit with a 525-foot diameter on the earth’s surface. It’s a black hole that stands out from the green carpet of trees that surround it when seen from above. Inside is a 460-foot deep abyss. Its walls are covered in cave paintings, hands, circles, and anthropomorphic figures that humans painted many centuries ago, and you can abseil down these limestone walls all the way to the bottom.

There is life inside its walls: sapodilla trees, mahogany trees, cedar trees, fig trees and orchids grow here, foxes and coyotes move within it, owls turn their heads from time to time, sparrow hawks and chachalacas flap their wings. But the true custodians of this trench are the hundreds of parrots that fly up in a spiral at dawn, ready to go out in search of food, aware that they must return before sunset.