Creatures Of The Night

It was difficult to resist the promise of thousands of bats flying over you as they exited their cave. Maybe I should've gotten my rabies shot. But I joined the Lanquín Cave tour with Nick, Suzi, Caroline and Angel. We explored part of the enormous limestone cavern and our guide pointed out the usual formations in the stalagmites and stalactites.

Having seen the Reed Flute Caves of China, I wasn't terribly impressed. If you've seen one limestone cave, you'll have seen this one. But it had bats!

So we sat at the mouth of the cave at dusk and the lights were turned out. A few started early and quietly left the cave, but not long after, there was a steady stream of tiny bats fluttering over us. They were so quiet, you could hardly tell that they were about if not for our camera flashes and torch beams.

In fact, they were so quiet we didn't realize that they weren't just flying over us, they were also flying about us. But Suzi felt one brush past her head, and later, I felt the gust of one's wings flapping by. It wasn't the thrilling experience that I had expected (it was very dark and there was no loud squeaking noises at all), but it was still pretty cool.