Mini Skeleton Cave
What bizarre things we could learn more from an ancient risky massive shrunken mini skeleton cave than school
The following seemingly innocent little excursion, teached me to always trust your intuition and if you feel like vacuum cleaners are attacking your throat: don’t walk any further!
This afternoon we decided to go to the marl caves. Yes after the scary noise incident in the other cave. I thought what the heck, I might as well do another round of panic attack launch to make sure the stress levels don’t get a too easy life.
As usual we take the car; we are far too lazy for other types of transportation and our teleporting system failed so off we go searching for the next caves taking this rather complicated route through a totally deserted area.
It took us for ever to finally find the concerning holes in the ground. Our route took us 15 minutes to get there; but it now seemed that if we had been taken the road behind the vacation parc with the cottages, through the bushes. With the famous legs-car (or walking for normal people) it would have taken us exactly 1 minute!
In all euphoria we arrive at the practically empty parking area where we immediately fired about eighty questions to the innocent parking boy on the spot. About the park area and what there was to be seen inside, how long it would take to get through the whole Flinstone look-a-like cave, which was apparently an hour and a half, and all sorts of useless questions which only can be asked by morons.
So this parking guy started explaining all in and outs of the attraction to a car full of raving nitwits with this strange Dutch accent, which you could have found out yourself by just going in the stupid cave and let it all happen.
Shrunken accumulated skeletons
He was talking about the history of the Marl Caves, discounts and blah blah blah. But what he didn’t rattled about was that the stupid marl caves are born out of little dead corps; sort of swimming mini skeletons according to husband.
Marl caves are formed from shrunken accumulated skeletons of tiny swimming crustaceans. Inclusive their poo is my conclusion.
It’s a built up from dried carcasses of fossil fishes from a million years ago.
Anyway to decide if the skeleton poo was really a joke or real fact, we went in the cave, which we had done anyway if we hadn’t known about the disturbing substances which could be falling right out of the poo ceiling into my fresh washed hair.
Which could be a problem because washing hair is equivalent to a marathon for people with some sort of fatigue syndrome.
First stop in the cave was of course the Loo which turned out to be ice-cold and I almost froze myself to the toilet seat.
Then we passed a long hall full of Christmas miniature tableau’s, but I won’t bother you with elves and reindeer sentiment for now.
Entering these caves was quite impressive and every part had its own story which we could read with the help of photos on the wall.
Fly in a jar
All kind of miserable young men from who you could tell right away they didn’t shower as much as they should, were shown on the pictures. Sort of cave men disguised as mine workers who didn’t have a clue why on earth they choose for such a job. But then again; maybe there was nothing to choose.
Looking at the pictures, a total claustrophobic feeling came over me. It must have been terrible going 10 light year’s underground: no fresh air, no exit in case of unexpected cave ghosts or awakened skeletons and what about if the cave should collapse. Or twenty men would be farting all at the same time.
Far below the surface of the earth men were digging and collecting coal and marl which they used to build the houses with. Nowadays they still use it to make collectible items and art for tourists.
From all the creepy cadavers, artists had created all types of scenes, objects and persons for us people to behold.
Amazing marl and sand sculptures to give tourists a bit value for their money, otherwise it was just a cave, creepy caves that is, with poo on the ceiling.
Also you can make your own artistic marl sculptures, search for ancient fossils, see educational films and test your knowledge on interactive tablets.
During walking through all the marl halls, learning all kinds of stuff you’d never attained before; I slowly started to breathe heavier and did I have to drag along my body with me less fit as the hour before.
Occasionally looking at my mom who started to walk slower also; we fell behind husband and daughter while thinking why on earth am I turning in to a skeleton sucking monster.
Gradually I was trying to inhale life air like a fly caught in a mason jar with the cap very tight closed. That’s why I now don’t catch anymore flies disturbing my daily lunch while inside the house, because now I experienced that every drop of oxygen is important for fly and human.
Not that this was the first time gasping for air and feeling you’re about to smack the sand sculptures; but now I suddenly saw this huge fly inside an oxygen less jar hysterically bumping against the cap to get out. That’s how I now felt, being in this creepy cadaverish cave.
The huge amount of crete fine dust full of millions of years old pulverized crustaceans in the cave took over my lungs and slowly made me turn into a squeezed lemon with a troubled thorax.
I made it clear to my family that I was about to see all kinds of light bulbs with weird faces looking like Charlie Chaplin in a vacuum mode and mom did felt the same way too, but I’m not sure she saw Charlie too.
Not knowing if I could go on further, let alone walking to the exit; I grabbed a vitamin C tablet out of my bag and gave mom one as well.
Still wondering if it had to do with the shortage of fresh air inside or the fact that I maybe took a sedative pill instead of a Vitamin C. You know; I don’t actually take pills. Or drugs. But it could be the case that someone had put the pill in my bag when I was not watching. The parking boy maybe.
Hoping this small immune boost would give me extra miles to make it through the entire cave, I immediately noticed: I couldn’t.
I instantly started purging a slight panic attack which gave me the awesome look of an owl seeing a naked human being. I think I totally had trouble keeping my eye balls inside my head as well as keeping my arms still from grabbing passants.
As usual I started to curse the whole dang cave for everything I could think of and that they could have warned people on fore hand that if you are an asthma person (which I not even am) it’s best not to enter. Which on itself isn’t that abnormal since there always are signs at roller coasters and stuff to not enter when people have some kind of heart failures issues and such.
Do they think it’s funny going in as ignorant dude, sucking up all fine dust you can think of and subsequently gasping for the next tiny bit of oxygen somewhere in the maze of cave corridors looking like an owl who accidentally met a wash dryer.
Well the whole cursing thing was of short duration because the shortness of breathe. We were three-quarter in the caves and I was calculating in full madness how on earth reach the exit, let alone reach it alive. I told Jack and daughter, mom and I couldn’t go on no more and the battle back began.
Despite gasping for air, returning to the exit went faster than we started and I run like an elderly running after the bus that just passed by. To catch breathe again, we took a seat in the mini coffee shop at the end of the cave were we examined why this happened, but most of all why the cave owners didn’t warn risk groups from being squeezed like a lemon and just basically die in the cave from an mini skeleton overdose.
Be warned
At the dried shrunken carcasses, inclusive their poo, gate when we left; the-surprised-that-we-visited-the-cave-with-a-Guiness-record-laugh-at-us-cashiers, told us that we also could go much deeper in the mines and take a special mine car ride.
At that point my blood pressure did weird things and did I make an attempt to curse them real good for ever and ever; but this was boycotted by my insane family who pulled my arm off, so I wouldn’t have been able to say a swear word.
It never crossed my mind the cave would be full of invisible fine dust with ancient stool stuff. Exhaust gas was known to me to be health risky, but sand like business I didn’t know at all you could also ruin your health or life span.
Many studies and researches show that breathing particle pollution are serious health threats which can affect both your lungs and your heart.
It can trigger all kinds of things you don’t want in your life as: aggravated asthma, decreased lung function, increased respiratory symptoms with sometimes illness and hospitalization as result.
It also seems simple sand can cost you your life: desert dust storms carry fine sand particles over long distances, causing health issues especially in Mediterranean countries. Well who knows this. I didn’t, but if you take your health the serious way, things to bear in mind.
If you are traveling to Holland some day and you don’t have asthma or some kind of allergies; you definitely need to visit this ancient mini-skeletons cave (Mergelrijk/Valkenburg) in the South hills of Holland. It should be part of your education haha; you’ll (hardly) can see this elsewhere.
Sources:
https://www.lung.org/clean-air/outdoors/what-makes-air-unhealthy/particle-pollution
https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/health-and-environmental-effects-particulate-matter-pm
https://ec.europa.eu/easme/en/news/understanding-health-effects-desert-dust-mediterranean-countries
