[Bubba]

Some of you may have heard on the news about the six cavers trapped in a cave in Mexico - one of our mates is on the expediiton and it's been a bit of a media circus over on sister site ukc.com - had emails from most of the national daily's - ooooh! exciting stuff!

[Bubba]

It's a Combined Services Caving Association expedition - all bar two of the members of the trip are from the forces but it's not a military operation as such.

[Bubba]

The forces are most likely to want to do things with their own people as much as possible. Since the situation isn't critical they can afford to wait for their own specialists to arrive. Cave divers in the UK are nearly all members of the Cave Diving Group and as such will have met certain standards of training. Also, one of the divers knows that particular cave system well (most of the exploration of this cave has been done by Brits).

The locals will be an unknown quantity and are unlikely to be as well equipped as the forces team.

If it gets to the stage where an underwater extraction is necessary then they will need the best people for the job.

[Bubba]

The rescue has started - 2 out so far - big relief  :D

[dontfollowme]

Nice one. I saw the graphics on the news and it looked a little scary

[Bubba]

Well fuck me, that was a hectic week.

Glad everyone got out fine and it's been an interesting insight into how the media machine works when it gets it's teeth into a story.

I've had a lovely selection of abuse from Mexicans via ukcaving.com, but at the end of the day, it's probably benefited the site more than harmed it. The photo gallery went from 1000 views as this whole episode was starting, to over 100,000 views four days later.

Hopefully now it'll become yesterday's news....

[dave]

I've had a lovely selection of abuse from Mexicans via ukcaving.com,....

whats the crack with that then?

[Bubba]

Lots of ruffled feathers due to the shit-stirring by the Mexican media. Most emails were of the "what the hell were you doing in our country illegally, you wouldnt' like it the other way round..." etc etc - I think it'll calm down once it's established that their presence in Mexico wasn't some sinister military operation, but just a caving expedition.

Actually, the worst mail I got was some nasty racist anti-Mexican nonsense from an American complaining about immigrants.

[dave]

mick ryan isn't mexican is he?    :wink:

[dave]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3581031.stm

[Bubba]

Yeah, it's been a very tense few days - we got a call yesterday from one of the team saying they'd been told that they were being held indefinitely.

The embassy did a good job of silencing all press on the matter as things got very delicate. We thought it was going to be a repeat of the Greek plane-spotters thang, but luckily it's not gone that far.

A big relief all-round, but unfortuantely this may have wrecked the future of cave exploration in Mexico. As I've said on ukcaving.com, the media turned what was a routine sitting out of floodwater into a huge media farce. It show's you just how cynical you've got to be regarding anything that the media report.