Cueva de los Tayos means Cave of the Oilbirds, and the birds are the real inhabitants. Tayos, Steatornis caripensis, are nocturnal and nest in caves throughout the Andean jungles of South America. The Shuar people descend into this cave every spring on vine ladders, carrying bamboo torches, to collect fledgling oilbirds, which they call guácharos or tayos.
The cave is on the eastern slopes of the Andes in Morona-Santiago province, Ecuador, in high rainforest two kilometres south of the Santiago River and 800 metres west of the Coangos. It is cut into thinly bedded limestone and shale, and the main entrance drops through a vertical void of 70 metres. Local people had known it for centuries.
It became internationally famous for a story about something that is not there. Erich von Däniken popularised a claim that the cave held a hidden library of golden plates inscribed with hieroglyphs, variously credited to extraterrestrials or to a lost human civilisation. A string of expeditions went looking, scientific and otherwise, including one in 1976 whose members included the astronaut and engineer Neil Armstrong.
Nothing was found. The archaeological consensus is that the golden library was a hoax, and the cave's genuine interest, a major limestone system in remote rainforest with a large oilbird population, has been rather buried under the story.
As of 2023 it is the longest cave in Ecuador, and the surveyed passage ends in a sump.
Getting there is difficult and access is arranged with the Shuar community. The entrance descent is a 70 metre rope drop, which sets the terms of any visit before you reach the cave at all.
Ecuador
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