My train
The tour bus took us up into the mountains into the national park. Our guide was telling us about how lots of people, especially children, still get killed or injured from unexploded US bombs.
In the national park there were many different species of butterflies. The guide explained that some of the mountains, that are limestone, did not have trees growing on them as they had been 'scarred' by the bombs.
In the national park
Where the bombs had ruined the cliff
The national park is not far from Laos and has a river that has come from Laos into. We were shown where the world's largest cave was. Not only would you need $3000, and to wait till 2016 to go in, but you would need to be accompanied by 26 people to carry your things, cook and other jobs. The hike into that cave would take 6 days!
The river from Laos
Me by the river
We saw a temple before getting to the first cave. It was really small- probably only a couple of meters long. The first cave was called 'Paradise Cave,' and we had to walk up 600m to get there.
When I walked in I was completely memorised by it. I wasn't expecting the cave to be so big. We had to walk down lots of steps to get right into the cave. We walked for a kilometre into the cave. It was amazing to see all the staglimites, and pools of water. Further down into the cave- it was 26km- there is an underground river. We didn't get far enough to see it. The pictures, unfortunately, don't do it justice at all.
The stairs into the cave
Me in the cave
There were many different rock formations which were really interesting.
In the cave- different shapes in the rocks
Once we'd finished taking in the cave, our next stop (after an awesome lunch buffet!) was the Dark cave. To get to the cave, we had to zip wire across the river. We got to try out zip lining, by going on a small zip wire and dropping into the water.
A river that we passed on the way to the dark cave
The 300m long zip wire took us right across the lake. Just before I got to the end, the guide was shouting at me to stop! I couldn't remember being told how to stop and panicked a bit before stopped naturally at the end. Both guides were in hysterics- they were just messing with me!
A bad picture of a bit of the zip wire
We had to swim a short way to get to the cave. Once there we ventured into the cave, with our hard hats and head torches! There was a river running into the cave, and on the walls there were some fossils. As we ventured further into the cave, it started to get muddy.
We climbed up and as we did the cave started to narrow and get more muddy! Before we knew it, we were up to our knees in mud, climbing through the cave, with only our head torches for light.
We reached the end to find a full mud bath. If I stood up, I was still in mud up to my chest. The guide told us to turn off our head torches! It was pretty cool and surreal to be in totally darkness in a pool full of mud!
After a while, we put on our torches and with my whole body covered in mud, we climbed back through the cave.
Once we reached the river again, we had to swim 60m through the cave. When we could see light, we had to turn our torches off and just swim towards daylight.
Once out the cave, we had to canoe back across the river. It took a while to get the mud off me! I had dinner at the hostel with the Canadian girl, and got an early night as I had a bus early the next day!
No comments:
Post a Comment