Maconjo N°1

Michael Laumanns - 28/11/2015

The walkable roof collapse of the main entrance leads down to a well proportioned gallery of about 10 m height and 40 m width, which seems to be completely closed by boulders to the N. However, a narrow passage on the right allows passing the boulder. The crawl soon widens into a wide but low (0.5 m) bedding plane before it opens again into a well sized gallery (4 m high and 20 m wide) which is the continuation of the cave’s entrance part. The passage is heading to the NW and branches off into a NW and N lead. The 40 m long N branch starts with a daylight shaft of about 8m depth and leads into a phreatic tunnel gallery with many solution pockets on the ceiling. The cross-section of the gallery changes to a rift type at its end. A colony of about 1.000 fruit bats of the big species Rousettus aegyptiacus leachii (A.SMITH 1829) inhabit this part of the cave. Several side passages ends after a few metres but one small (1 x 1 m) phreatic passage with a ..,keyhole"-shaped cross-section leads back to the above-mentioned low bedding plane. The 30 m long voluminous NW branch ends again in a small rift-shaped fissure, which is strongly corroded. The locals who know the cave very well left a construction of wooden sticks in this part of the cave. It is used to light a fire that produces smoke to hunt the fruit bats, which reportedly have a sweet taste”. Very few speleotherms (dripstones) are present in the NW and N branch only. A guano deposit can be found in the N branch where the fruit bats live.