Sunset and Bat Caves - Undara

We took a sunset tour this evening.

Our enthusiastic guide took us off-roading in a search for wildlife. We managed to see some kangaroos, wallabies and wallaroos. The best part, however, was the champagne and fruit and cheese platter waiting for us at the top of the hill when we finished our jeep tour. Sunset over the savanna was certainly not disappointing.

When we finished stuffing our faces with cheese and fruit, we turned on our flashlights and headed down to the 'bat caves'. The caves are the home of tiny insect-eating microbats. They also host the incredibly venomous brown snakes that eat the bats. Sometimes, visitors see the brown snakes striking the bats in the cave. Unfortunately for us (well - maybe I should say fortunately) it was the wet season so there weren't as many bats and we didn't see any brown snakes. We had to walk down in the dark so we wouldn't scare the bats away. Our guide gave us a count to three and we all took photos of the darkness, hoping to capture the bats with our flashes. The second time he did it, I managed to capture a great shot of a bat at the side of the camera frame. Everyone was really envious of our camera because you can actually make the bat out even though he is not very centered. It was exciting, but I must admit, I was relieved that we didn't encounter any brown snakes. We attended the ranger talk on all of the venomous animals in the savanna the night before so I wasn't too keen on having one of the deadliest snakes in the world bite me. The ranger did tell us that the survival rate for snake bites in Australia is the best in the world, but I didn't want to try it out.