The Cango Caves revisited

 Michael - Alternate Thursdays

Despite the title, this is not a repost. I’ve visited the Cango Caves three times in my life, once as a child, once as a young man, and once last weekend. The caves are spectacular. They’re situated under the foothills of the Swartberg mountains in Precambrian limestones, and they run for at least four kilometers, although only about a quarter of that is accessible to the public. The second chamber is one of the most spectacular caves I’ve ever seen. But why try to describe it when there are pictures?

My reaction to the caves has been quite different each time. Obviously, some of that is due to the distinct periods of my life when I've seen them. Some of it is, however, due to the difference in the culture and style, perhaps the thoughtfulness, of the people who manage the caves. Finally, on this latest occasion, I believed that nature itself was changing slightly, perhaps in response to the daily hordes of humans who come to visit the site.

What I recall from my first visit as a child with my parents was the wonder of these majestic and huge cave. There were perhaps twenty people on the tour. The caves seemed endless, each different from the previous one, each full of stories about angels’ wings frozen in the stone, Cleopatra’s needles, sculptures of the caves’ discoverer. I knew the stories were nonsense, but some at least were fun. Colored lights were switched on and off to illuminate particular features or structures. Everything was damp and we could see the water dripping down the stalactites slowly working to join with the stalagmite rising from the floor of the cave, a work of thousands of years. And we saw pillars where that work was complete.

When we reached the end we saw the metal ladder climbing up to a hole in the cave wall. Here, people could experience narrow tunnels, chimneys up through the rock and eventually the infamous letterbox where you posted yourself out at the end. Here, we turned back.

The next time I was a young man and went with friends. We looked forward to the adventure of the whole tour, and I looked forward to seeing areas I had not seen before. This time I found the stories and the colored lights irritating and there were about fifty people, some of whom would do the adventure part and some of whom would not. I tried to hang back, to have some time to contemplate the caverns. The adventure itself was fun, but the narrow tunnels and chimneys left little time to see the caverns and, indeed, the ones there were far less interesting than those on the general tour.

On this last occasion, many things had changed. Admittedly, we went on the Sunday of a long weekend. Booking was essential and more than 100 people joined our late afternoon timeslot. They were divided into three groups – one where the guide would speak in Afrikaans and two where English would be the language. It was clear that many visitors were from overseas and spoke among themselves in other languages. There was only a story or two, and the colored lights were banished to one small cave that we walked past – now named the Rainbow Cave. The plain white light showed the caves to much better advantage with their rich natural colors. The guide was a black man (my previous Apartheid-era visits were all guided by white men) who sang for us in the first cave, illustrating the acoustics that had been the attraction for concerts in the main cavern until 1990. 

His introduction began with the San people who had lived around the caves for 75,000 before the caves were “discovered” (in the sense that Christopher Columbus discovered America). The San believed that deep in the caves, their ancestors continued their lives and that they should be left in peace to do that. Cango should start with a click as the San pronounced it.

All this was good, but not everything struck me that way. The huge caverns felt crowded. There were visible signs of damage including the “drum” – a broad thin stalactite that had strummed for countless tourists over a hundred years until it gave up and sheared away. 

The caves no longer felt damp, despite all the visitors. The caves are drying, at least in the public sections. The stalactites will never now join the stalagmites. I hope things are different deeper in the caves. I’m glad they are left in peace. At least by the living.