Exploring a Bat Cave in the Guatemalan Jungle

I am already able to walk! I am preparing a post about it but you won´t read it until tomorrow. Today I will tell you about how I hiked to a Bat Cave and explored it with a very nice Finnish Girl.

I met Laura Jokio in the hostel I´m volunteering at. We hitted it off from the first moment and became good friends. She doesn´t like to admit it though, but that´s how cold Finnish people are (Just kidding, not generalizing here fellow Finnish Steemians). She loves to hike and like adventure. She spits in the trail and snorts using jungle leaves. In a few words, the perfect hiking buddy.

We hiked around one hour. It was somewhat hard for me because I am not completely healthy but I enjoyed it. We did a lot of stops and she was patient about it. When we got to the Caves, we knew immediately it was going to be an awesome experience. Look at the entrance to the cave just side by side with a waterfall!

Going into a Cave without a tour guide is a challenge by itself. Going into a bat cave without a flashlight is an acomplishment! With just candles and our cameras we started to explore, hesitant at first but getting more comfortable with every step we took.

This Caves are enormous. Sometimes the ceiling was more than fifty meters above us, other times we had to duck to keep going. It would be completely dark if not for our candles so we were walking very slowly.

Getting good pictures was a hard thing to achieve because you have to open the exposure of the camera for as long as we could. Without a tripod this means that the pics won´t have the best quality, especially if you are a rookie in this art.

We didn´t go there to stay in the main road so we explored adyacent routes and found some special places. In here you can see a small candle altar, probably used for some Catholic ritual because you can see the image of Jesus in the Candles.

I´ve always found stalactites and stalagmites very impresive so I couldn´t leave this photo out of this post.

You should always be careful where you put your hands and where you are walking, you could end up being the victim of this apple size friend (size without counting legs). 

We heard that if you go deep enough you will reach a point where there is no air at all. If you light up a cigarrete (ilegal) you might be able to make circles with the smoke and it will stay there and won´t be destroyed or winded up. Obviously that was a scam because we got to the end of the cave and didn´t achieve to get it done.

We even stumbled upon an eagle. A rock eagle created by the moist and water. Can you see it? It is there, look closer.

Imagine walking thourgh almost complete darkness and just hear the bats wings pass you by a few inches from you... we were also accompaneid by the sound of running water through all the cave but we only managed to see where it came from only one time. We put off our candles and I tried to get a photo of it. 

It was already getting dark outisde on our way back (we did brought cellphones to keep track of time hehe). So when we were leaving the cave we got to see all the bats going out of the cave! It felt so magical and out of this world. Imagine thousands of bats coming out of this cave flying just a few inches of our heads. This lasted for about five minutes. Bats and Bats flying out of their dark lairs.

In the end, seeing the entrance and some sunlight after 4 hours of exploring this dark alleys was refreshing and a bit reassuring. 

This was our first view when we got out of the cave. Amazing right?

In the end, tired and soared we headed back to the hostel. Here I am, accomplished but tired as hell.

This is an experience I recommend one hundred percent. I would do it again if not for the entrance fee of almost 5 dollars. I hope you liked going through the caves with Laura and Me.

Remember, Be Here Now.