Tham Chang Cave -Laos (Part 4)
It had been almost an hour since we first entered the cave. The small shaft of light we had entered through was only a vague pinprick by the time we had reached the heal of the boot-shaped cave. The cavern had not narrowed even slightly, and the chamber leading directly to the right was equally large, equally foreboding.
I looked at Marc, looked at his flashlight beam, then mine.
Amazingly, we had been rented flashlights with new batteries. Unfortunately, this gave us the false confidence to continue.
We rounded the corner and the last of the ambient light disappeared, leaving us with only our flashlights to guide us back. The toe end of the boot was only a hundred or so yards further. We hadn't paid much attention to it while we passed by initially, but when turned around and stopped to roll up a newspaper sized spliff, we observed our stone seats were the result of a cave-in. The boulders, some as large as cars and buses rose in a semi-neat pile against one wall. As we smoked and recounted our adventure so far, I focused my light up to the top of the pile and I thought it looked like there was a hole between the cave wall and boulder pile. I asked Marc to pull out the map and we looked at it together. Here we were, in the arch of the boot-shaped cave and there was a faint x where we stood right now.
What really glued Marc and I together was not a shared disposition on politics, similar childhood, or a long list of similar likes and dislikes. What kept us side by side was a passion for bad ideas and ill begotten adventure.
I climbed up. It looked like the cave-in was not from the ceiling but from the entrance way to another cave.
"C'mon!" I yelled down.
Marc had started to come up behind me and had also tried to interject some common sense but I had disappeared through the hole and into a brand new world.
This world was darker, warmer and more confined. The cave split immediately to the left or right, paralleling the larger, outside cave. This inner sanctum was intimate yet unknown. The proximity of the walls and ceiling resulted in our flashlights reflecting off of every crystalline surface and every pair of eyes. The nature of a sandstone cave is that every surface glitters like it's encrusted in gold a jewels.
Marc tried cautioning me one last time, "Wait! They'll never look for us in here!"
I looked at his fading flashlight, "Ya, let's just explore a little and turn around."
For some reason Marc took this as the truth and we decided on going left first.
The cave was long and straight, taking us past what I imagined to be the heel of the boot. After that it veered to the right, toward the heart of the mountain. We came into a central chamber where our path split into four. At this point even I was thinking better of continuing, seeing both our flashlights starting to dim. I guess what pushed us onwards was the idea of finding the true center of the mountain (how we would ascertain that is anybody's guess), and my, perhaps naïve belief, we could find our way back.
I did have a trick up my sleeve and so I suggested we stick to the finger on the right and follow it to it's end. It ended after 10min of exploring and we followed the wall out and into the next chamber and into the next...
The cave curled, corkscrewing clockwise and downwards into an ever richening cave of crystalline walls. Marc and I both agreed we must be getting closer to the heart because it made sense that the closer we got the more compressive weight on the walls and that was why we were seeing the cave walls shine more and more with each turn we took.
Finally, after one last turn we entered a sacred chamber, seemingly lit under it's own power, glowing bright golden yellow. By this point we had been slightly ducking for the last 10min and this last cave follicle expanded into a place we could both stand. At the very tip, the very end of this cave and at the very heart of the mountain was a partially buried, perfect, golden sphere. The sphere was twinkling, luminous, and dazzling. It was half buried in the cave's wall, half in the dirt floor. Marc and I approached it cautiously. Not because we were afraid of our faces melting off like in the last scene of Raiders of the Last Ark, but because we thought we had found a great treasure.
Up close the perfect ball was a more perfect version of the glittering, jeweled walls surrounding us, but after patting it and laughing at our silliness, it echoed back at us. It was hollow. It was a shell of something. I picked up a nearby rock, and after a 4 second consultation, threw it at the glistening sphere. It cracked! We came back to it and saw that a piece of the crust had fallen in. I carefully grabbed it and pulled it away. The sphere was filled with sand. Soft, golden beach sand. It must have been shielded by this perfect geological structure, never to feel the compression it's other familial grains felt, living under all this weight.
We wondered, laughed and smoked a giant gagger to celebrate our discovery and adventure. At one point Marc turned and looked/squinted me in the eye "That was pretty scary" he said.
I didn't mean to as be serious, but there was no denying our dim future. "You don't know what scary is. The horror is still to come."
We had risked it all to come to this point. Marc's flashlight was nothing more that a dull candlelight, my own was maybe 3 candles strong.
"I think we better turn yours off for now and make an honest effort to get out of here" I said to Marc.
He sighed, turned his off and we both resolved to try to unwind ourselves from this tangle.
Both of our short term memories had been clouded by the rush of our discovery and by about half an ounce of ganga. I wanted to rush out of this finger, out of the cave into the central chamber and down the original cave, but the dimness of our one remaining flashlight made everything unfamiliar again and the shape of every corridor and room was unattainable with our current visibility. I decided we should keep to the wall on the right and follow it out. If I remembered correctly, we were on finger 3 of 4 and if we were diligent about not skipping anything and potentially turning ourselves back around into a floundering circle, we would be fine.
As it turned out, there were 5 fingers and the fifth finger had 3 more little fingers and that it when I started to lose hope.
Wherever we were, it was not a good place. Writing started appearing on the wall. Arrows, and skulls pointed us towards, or directed us away from somewhere, I couldn't tell. After thoroughly turning ourselves around, the narrow, winding, confusing tunnel opened up and I stopped blindly following the wall and asked Marc to turn on his flashlight. We both needed some reassurance by this point (3 hours in) and Marc's dull beam, in conjunction to mine illuminated the central chamber with the 5 fingers.
Marc was unsure, but I saw a stick leaning against a rock I had seen earlier. (I don't know why I didn't tell him about this marker. I think it must have been that I liked that Marc looked to me in times like this. I wanted to have a presence that relied on a supernatural confidence, not one based on arrows and pointer sticks.)
With renewed confidence we went by one light and followed the wall out the 5 fingered chamber and down the long hollow. But it seemed a lot longer this time. We couldn't travel nearly as fast, as the light from my flashlight was only illuminating a step in front of us. Our anxiety of losing the last of our light and being stuck in a cave that no one would or could look for us weighed heavily on our thoughts.
The floor narrowed substantially and we skirted past a rock. Marc tripped, his flashlight flickered on briefly as it hit the ground and then was out. I found Marc, and found his dead flashlight. "I think this is it!" I exclaimed. "Follow me!" I bounded up, leaving Marc in the dark.
"Hey fucker! Get back here!"
"Oops. Sorry man!" I turned around with the flashlight but had to take a few steps back to properly light Marc's way. "Sorry. I think we're actually going to make it out!"
Marc had his reservations and it took us a minute to climb up and over the massive boulders while almost blind. The last remaining light from the flashlight illuminated a small dark hole and after we both squeezed through, we were greeted by the anxious eyes of 4 teenage Laotians. With only a candle in hand, they were being sent after the crazy Canadians. We received and offered big smiles.
We survived and had a tale to tell.