Between January 2 and 9, 1998, Louise Hose, the country's leading female cave explorer and a geology professor from Westminster College in Missouri, will lead a team of scientists into an almost unknown world--where they will study living creatures so bizarre that for centuries no one realized they were alive.
Hose's team will travel to southern Mexico to delve into the Cueva de Villa Luz, or "The Cave of the Lighted House." This unique cave has been used for centuries by the Mayan people and their descendants the Chol, for religious ceremonies. Among the Chol, the story that the cave harbor mythical powers is a long tradition. In a sense, the scientists are about to prove the truth of the ancient myth.
Hose, who first visited the cave last year, studied and collected samples of what some cavers have ingloriously but descriptively called "snot-tites" growing there. These slimy white masses, known only to grow in this cave, were thought to be bacteria, living in a highly acidic, and largely unlit environment. They excited her scientific curiosity immediately.
