Watching a NatGeo feature on bats brought back memories of my exciting yet horrifying experience of entering a cave friggin’ full of scary bats. Had to wade through knee-deep guano swarming with cockroaches and ants and maybe aliens.
I bet it only took about 15min (30min back-to-back) to clear the guano pit, but it felt like a lifetime. But I totally forgave the universe when after curse-filled wading, we reached a huge cavern with about a meter of hole on the roof which let the natural light. In this part, which our guides call the “cathedral”, there were not bats.
We started a little bonfire then the most amazing thing happened. The putrid smell, which by that time we have gotten used to, was suddenly overpowered by a fresh pine-like smell. Our guides said the burning of the dried twigs caused the cave air to smell good. Now that’s cool. To this day, I regret not investigating the phenomena for real.
