With only the aid of an oil lamp they were not able to see the extent of their find and they estimated that the cavern was five miles long, three miles wide and one mile high. They were more than a few miles out but such excitability however is surely warranted by the awesome spectacle electricity has brought out of the dripping dark. Accessed today down a long flight of stairs rather than a leather strap, Van Zyl's Chamber is pure Baroque. Rococo waves of rust and marbled sand sweep across the vaulted ceiling of the cavern. The walls drip with flowstone draperies like the Pipe Organ or bristle with seaweed tendrils.
Stalactites cascade from above like the frosted breath of hidden gods.
Gauzy columns, such as the ten-metre high Cleopatra's Needle, float upwards to meet their other half. Stalacatites have growth rings like trees and the calcite roses and cave popcorn, arum lilies and seaweed gardens are sculpted at rate of three to five cubic millimetres every hundred years. The petrified weeping willow formation in the second great chamber is estimated at 1,5million years old. The real world beckons, however, of silicon and cell-phones, alarm clocks and appointments and alarums. Our desert liner turns, reluctantly, for home.