Passage II

Gua Telinga

[1]

At the end of an hour's trek through Malaysia's Taman Negara rain forest, my guide Ong told me we had arrived at Gua Telinga. Knowing that the Malaysian word gua means cave, because I scanned the horizon for a vast portal into a rocky mountain. I spotted only branches outlined against the sky. Ong suggested I look down at a mound protruding from the jungle floor. He knelt at the base of the outcropping, parted the greenery, and revealed an opening about eighteen inches in diameter. Gua!

[2]

A gua telinga is a bat cave, and bats, I realized, can find shelter in a small crevice. Less certain of my own flexibility, I nonetheless followed Ong and on my hands and knees squeezed through the slight darkness into the fissure blackest I had ever seen. Seen? I could not even tell if my eyes were open! I smelled dampness and a pungent sweetness created and possibly caused, I learned later, by the diet of fruit bats. I heard the bats rustling. Everywhere I heard them breathing.

[3]

[1] Ong warned me that he was about to switch on a flashlight, since he could never have prepared me for the thousands of bats, startled by the light, colliding with the walls, each other, Ong, and me. [2] Ong directed the beam toward a fruit bat hanging from the ceiling its silver-dollar-sized eyes reflected the light brilliantly. [3]Unlike the tiny-eyed horseshoe bats, which use a kind of radar to navigate, fruit bats rely on sight. (24)

[4]

The bats spooked me less than did the spiders and snakes having crawled along in the muck of the cave floor, however. I wanted to retreat, but Ong was heading for an exit eighty yards away. I had to follow his flashlight.

[5]

After oozing throughout yet another tight opening into sunlight, Ong and I sprinted to a nearby water hole to rid them and our clothes of all physical reminders of Gua Telinga. The memories, though, are waterproof.