A few sensations to note about being in a cave... First, it’s cold – is was about 8 degree Celsius on the day we were there. And dark – the only illumination comes from your head lamp, so bring a spare. And surprisingly, it is so damp that the water vapour from our breath stayed floating in the air. Many of the pictures have speckles of water vapour in the frame. A very memorable experience came when we reached the end of the cave, turned off our lamps, and remained silent. We “experienced the cave”; its sounds, smells, feels, and, well, lack of sights. I’ve only ever experienced that level of pitch darkness once before, and that was at the end of a copper mine I visited.
I was rather anxious of the crawling through tight spaces (read: narrow tunnels), but I felt like a kid again and enjoyed that the most. I did come back rather bruised (particularly around the knees) – but I don’t remember making any of these, so it doesn’t matter. Saw a few impressive calcite formations (see pictures – one is of the bacon strips on the ceiling, and the other of me posing at the bottom of the Rain Barrel (the cliff from which we rappelled)). Notably, one was called the “Starship Enterprise”, but seeing the object for which it was named required a lot of imagination. Apparently the delicate cave structures have survived three major earthquakes, which is reassuring given the recent media coverage about how the region is more prone to mega-thrust earthquake than previously suspected.
Few animals to note: just a few insects. The guide told us that he’s seen salamanders a few times, but I did not see them. Apparently the cave used to house bats, but they have been scared away by cave visitors. Given that I am currently preparing a course on Infectious Diseases and that bats keep coming up as a vector or reservoir for many viral and bacterial species that can infect humans, I can’t say I was all too sad. Although, I did stumble upon an interesting article on White Nose Syndrome, a fungus that is infecting many bats in North America and is decimating the bat population. This fungus disrupts the hibernation pattern of bats and causes the bats to spend energy when they should be hibernating. It can even kill the poor little creatures. Upon learning about this disease, I decided that my Infectious Diseases course focused too much on human health. They’ll be a wildlife infectious diseases component now. Every adventure teaches me something that I can bring back to my class….
