Caves, Caves, Caves part 2: More caves @ Thamlod, Thailand
Our all-day caving tour was scheduled to leave at 9:00am. As we walked up to the tour truck, John Spies, the owner of cave lodge and star of Helen’s insomnia fueled reading was there to see us off. Helen attempted to sound sane while peppering him with questions about his caving experiences. In particular, she was fascinated by the new species of cave fish he and his Aussie friends discovered.
The story goes: his friend was climbing a waterfall deep within one of the regional caves when his headlamp lit up a small pink creature clinging to the rock beside him. He watched it shimmy through the current using its four tiny fins like legs. He was amazed by this unusual behavior and wanted to collect it for further study. Lacking any pockets, he plucked it from the rock and popped it into his mouth. They later confirmed that this was a new genus of fish they named cryptotora. We are still in disbelief that someone would be that bold as to put an unknown creature in their mouth, but John held firm that the story was true.
John was a very friendly host. He shared some additional details around the time Planet Earth came to film the fish they discovered for the Caves episode. He said they spent six days lugging heavy cameras, equipment, and batteries in and out of the cave, and in the end they only used 15 seconds of footage. Helen, whose family was glued to the TV when Planet Earth came out, still thought that was pretty cool. As we left John made sure we had two liters of water per person, then waved us goodbye.
The first stop on our tour was Fossil Cave, a long cave that contained ancient fossils embedded in its walls. To get to the cave entrance, we were dropped off on the side of a road then marched through a corn field. There was a short “where is he taking us” moment as the path became less and less obvious. But our anxieties of getting lost in the corn maze rapidly transitioned to fears of dying alone in a rock labyrinth when we reached the cave entrance.
We carefully followed our tour guide down into the depths. The ground was very steep and slippery with loose dirt. We stuck close to our guide since he carried the most powerful light. We ooh’d and ahh’d at the appropriate moments and attempted to take photos in the less than ideal lighting. As we walked deeper into the cave Helen was affronted by the stale quality of the air. She had read in John’s memoir that some caves have “bad air” due to the accumulation of carbon dioxide from decomposing forest detritus trapped in their depths. This cave must have had some of that, because it smelled like someone was continuously exhaling in your face. She hoped the next cave would have more airflow.
Eventually we reached an underground stream and waded against its current to the end of the cave. At the end we found the fossils that gave John the idea for the name. The fossils were arguably less interesting than the cave itself. They looked like seashells embedded into the rock face and could have been easily missed without an expert guide.
We turned back and as we followed the guide out of the cave we came to a fork in the road. Our guide turned to us and asked “which way is out?” Both directions looked the same. We took the 50/50 chance and pointed right. He chuckled and led us to the left. We didn’t find this as funny, but it sure strengthened our appreciation for the difficulty of navigating these underground mazes.
Next we hiked to Waterfall Cave, where we’d get a hands-on introduction to the concept of “the squeeze,” a term cavers use to describe navigating a tight space. Before we got too deep into Waterfall Cave our guide recommended that we take off our shirts and leave them on a ledge. We thought this was odd, but we’d soon learn why. As we went further into the cave we stooped lower and lower until we were on our hands and knees crawling through the water to avoid contact with the low ceiling. At the tightest squeeze we army crawled through the stream, up to our necks in water. After roughly 400 meters of this we made it to the end (though the water kept going). We carefully leaned over a rocky ledge to gaze down an underground waterfall that dropped some 30 meters, pounding below us into the dark.
After seeing the waterfall we crawled back the way we came, grabbed our shirts, and prepared to hike to our third and final stop: X-Mas cave (John Spies discovered the cave on Christmas Day). X-Mas cave was quite a hike away, but once we got there it was one of the easier caves to explore and besides, we were experts now. We climbed down a primitive bamboo ladder and were treated to a relatively shallow cave full of huge, sparkly white rock formations. Stalagmites, stalactites, and pillars surrounded us, softly glittering in the light.
After X-mas cave we hiked to the road and were driven back to Cave Lodge. We made it back around 5:30, exhausted from a full day of hiking and caving. We showered up and enjoyed one last dinner at Cave Lodge, hoping to get to bed early so we could cross the final item off our Cave Lodge bucket list: sunrise.
The next morning we woke up to a buzzing 5:30am alarm and forced ourselves up. We quickly brushed our teeth and hopped on Adam’s bike for a short ride up the mountain to the lookout point. We parked our bikes and turned towards the sunrise — which unlike Angkor Wat — did not disappoint.
At the top of the mountain, we stood above a sea of clouds blanketing the valley. As the sky lightened the fog became luminous, contrasting with the dark canopies at the top of each summit. The whole area felt like it was coming to life. It was the most memorable sunrise we’d ever seen. The expanse of our view and vibrancy of the morning colors felt surreal. And the best thing about it was the silence. No loud motors, no music, and thankfully, no roosters.
