The Cave of the Hanging Serpents
Descent and renewal in Mexico
A story I told our eight- and six-year-old as we drove into the Mexican interior: when daddy met mummy he immediately fell in love and demanded her hand in marriage. She said: Maybe. First, a test. A feat to prove your worth. You must descend into the Cave of the Hanging Serpents in Kantemó. And so like Orpheus I descended into this underworld to emerge victorious clutching the Mantle of Destiny (my wife).
My kids say I’m not a Normal Daddy — I’m a Funny Daddy. They accuse me of telling tall tales. But it was true enough that we were headed to a cave of bat-eating snakes.
The journey inland
We drove from Cancún to Valladolid where we’d stay the night. iPads banned, my kids demanded stories. Why are the people dark skinned, they asked, which led to a very brief history of Mexico and the golden city Tenochtitlán and Hernán Cortés and the conquistadores. Tell us another story led to Pizarro and the Portuguese circumnavigation of Africa then Abel and Cain then Rachel and Laban then Joseph and his brothers. Joseph was the first distressed property investor in history, I explained, astutely buying up all Egyptians’ land on behalf of the Pharaoh at rock bottom prices. I’ll make astute investors out of them yet.
Valladolid has its charm — remnants of colonial architecture, a vibrant town centre square, and a dollop of pricier hipster-ish tourist traps. But perhaps familiarity and age has worn off some of my youthful exuberance and I noticed much more the poverty, the litter, the general decrepitude. Once I met an American in Costa Rica who told me he hated San José. He hated the barbed wire around houses, the mess, the poverty. He missed and appreciated home all the more. I thought him an idiot. Couldn’t he appreciate where he was on its own terms? Those eyes I had were a blessing, and I retain much of that, but I’m probably a little less earnest now.
From Valladolid we still had a two hour drive to Kantemó in time for dusk. Kantemó is a strip of a town you’d miss if you weren’t looking for it. The drive is surprisingly lovely. A single road that cuts through low dense jungle that occasionally canopies over. What a blessing this road was, what a miracle of a technology to slice through this tangle. How the conquistadores must have struggled to pass through such places.
In Kantemó you cannot miss the bat cave sign. The same man who met us a decade ago on our first descent met us again. This Charon was friendly, although even my Mexican wife struggled to understand his Spanish, tinged by the native Mayan tongue he spoke. Just like the blind white-translucent creatures that lurked in the pitch black of the water at the bottom of the caves, so his eyes bulged slightly with whatever whiteness stalked those depths.
Charon got out some old bikes. He’d take my son and I’d take my daughter on the rear racks. The last time my wife rode a bike was this trip a decade ago. This is what we would cross over with.
The jungle path
As we rode off the strip and into the jungle, I recalled my Mexican wife’s half-joke from a decade ago: they could do whatever they wanted with us in this remote dark place. I had dismissed it offhand then but felt it more keenly now taking two of our kids into the darkness.
About a year ago I played Schubert’s Erlkönig to my kids, translating it live. We played it a few times, a few different versions, in English also. It’s a short, beautiful, terrifying poem and piece. All three kids under seven gasped at the death of the boy in his father’s arms at the poem’s sudden end. ChatGPT drew up various versions of the forest and the elf king. It stuck with them. I thought of the Erlkönig as I rode the rusty old bike along the jungle path, my daughter on the back complaining as her boney little bum rattled along the rack. I hummed it to my eight-year-old when we stopped and teased him about the Erlkönig as he brushed me off.
The cave
We wait at the maw of the cave for the sun to set, swatting at mosquitos. Flitters in the dark as bats emerge. The mosquitos disappear as the bats feed. Predator birds screech in the distance as they feed on the bats. In whispers and total darkness we turn on our headlamps and descend into the caves. It is cool and moist but behind our masks we sweat. The cave floor is carpeted with bat droppings. Pebbled with fruit seeds and blanketed in white fungus. A decade ago this was the better part of a foot deep, but this time recent rains have washed away the excess. The main chamber is cavernous (ha ha). We stand upright and look down at the uneven floor. The descent into darkness on one side leads to water. Bats cling to the ceiling and dart about. Our guide tells us there are two tunnels we can take: one through which we crawl and one over which we climb. Porque no dos? We begin with the crawling tunnel.
Soon, some excited shrieking from my kids.
A serpent hangs from a hole in the rock, a blackness in its maw. We gather and watch it swallow the bat’s body then each wing, its jagged body outlined in its neck. Six-year-old asks where the body goes inside the bat. It melts.
Hundreds of snakes live in these crevices, each needing to eat only a few bats each week. We watch several more snakes gorge on their prey, the bat’s fury faces still in the maws of the serpents. One bat’s wings stuck to its devourer’s face who used a rock to dislodge it before swallowing.
The caves are pockmarked by fossil outlines. Shells and critters from pre-history. Sixty million years old, we are told. The kids beckon me excitedly to come see another shell outline.
The snake cave became our special place. Bats became our relationship animal. Their hanging hordes along Melbourne’s Yarra River dazzled us. One summer their bodies littered the earth in the summer heat. That was not auspicious. When we moved to Sydney the flying foxes that dart through Sydney’s humid evenings were a charming totem.
And so ten years later, we returned to the world above, together with two of our four kids, refreshed anew.
Beautiful post
Appreciated the River Styx reference..
HNY MS!
Misha, I didn't know I work alongside a poet.
Beautifully written.
Beautiful