Corn cricket

Brightly colored grasshopper

Brightly colored grasshopper

zig zag spider

The entrance to Lobatse cave 1.

In spite of little sleep the excitement of seeing a new cave got me up early and as soon as we’d had some breakfast Doug and I rigged the drop into Lobatse cave #1, we were all very glad the rain had stopped. It was during all this that Doug announced the trip report should be entitled ‘the drought is over’ to which we all heartily agreed. Karole rigged up first to climb down into the cave and as she began her descent a beautiful white owl, identified by Bill from Peri’s bird book as probably a barn owl flew out of the entrance. Bill, Ric and I followed her down. I was amazed to see the root structure of the fig trees at the entrance formed a column that extended all the way down the entrance shaft and into the talus cone at the bottom. The drop was approximately 18.5 meters.

Dead bat

Tom enters the cave (note the fig tree roots)

Tom at the bottom.

Rolf coming down