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The canal was heavily overgrown thanks
to the copious rain of the last few months coupled with the summer heat,
but the tunnels are still visible if you know where to look.
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Here I am at the entrance. There are three parallel tunnels. Curiously, they are on an incline such that the one I'm standing in always has the most water, whereas the one in the foreground has considerably less flow and much more mud accumulated. |
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There were not a lot of feeder tunnels along the length of this system, just this one and another of the same size. |
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As is typically the case, the turn in the tunnel opened across all three. Note how clean and dry the floor is to the right (upstream). The concrete at the start of the tunnels is high enough to prevent water from flowing in most times. It was similarly parched when we scouted this spot several months ago. |
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Downstream was a little dam that held
up the water. Fortunately, beyond this point things were very shallow.
And if you look carefully in the background, you will notice that Dani is a little tea pot. |
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Along the main section of this system
was this series of "windows" between tunnels. This feature showed
up a couple more times in this part of the system.
If I had the time and the talent, I'll bet I could Photoshop this pic into a great M.C. Escher work. |
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There was a series of drain grates right across from the "windows" between tunnels. Since we hit this system in the early afternoon, these provided enough light to illuminate the whole length of the tunnel. |
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This is the tunnel on the return trip.
We went back via the muddy tunnel opposite the one I was standing by in
the second image on this page.
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And here's the wildlife find of the trip:
baby swallows!
We would have thought it was a bit too late in the season for these guys to be hatching, but there they are. I also ran across several nests of this kind in another tunnel that I scouted earlier in the day just before we visited this one. |
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