Dom, Tan, Leilei, and Xixi in China: Back to 2 caves

Back in 2005 I went with a few friends to a cave 20 minutes motorbike ride from Bangxu where Tan's from originally. This was an amazing place, pretty inaccessible to most. After the motorbike ride to a friend's house a group of five of us hiked up the nearest mountain a 100 feet or so, then entered a split in the mountain and staggered down inside until it was pitch black. After we all donned torches I was told I would have to shimmy through an eight feet long gap in the rock that was 1 foot high and under 2 feet wide. One bloke went first, then another a minute later. It was then my turn and I suddenly got pre-claustrophobia of the highest degree. I told them I couldn't do it and they laughed the way people who have never experienced claustrophobia do. I sat by myself a while and reasoned that the pain of not going through this tiny gap and potentially seeing something only seen by a handful of people before should be greater than the discomfort of the fear of being stuck inside a rock for the rest of my life. I managed to reason that I couldn't live the rest of my life without knowing what was eight feet away so I went in arms first and used my elbows to leverage me through the cold stone. Panic was not a thousand miles away when my body was encased in stone but thankfully the blokes who had already gone through were shining their torches through so I could see light at the end of the tunnel. After probably only a few seconds I thrust my hands in the direction of the torches and one of the blokes grabbed them and pulled me the rest of the way. I can honestly say there's not been a scarier path traversed in my life.

Getting into the cave

Once in the cave it was difficult to get a real appreciation of the magnificence, due to the fact the torches pierced perhaps 100 feet at furthest throught the dank air. But I estimate the height at around 50 feet and the expanse roughly the size of a football field after we'd walked around. One of the other blokes had wisely bought a fistfull of joss sticks and after spending a few minutes lighting them all, left one every 10 feet we walked, an acknowledgement of the risks of getting lost in a pitch black cave the size of wembley with only one exit the size of a human.

The strange balls making much of the floor of the cave

But it was perfectly different from any terrain I'd experienced before. Strange muddy-coloured balls under our feet mingling with mini-volcano like rotundities that were probably related to stalagmites (tights come down). We spent around half an hour in the cave I guess, certainly one of the most fascinating 30 mins I have ever spent.

Nice cave terrain

So of course I wanted to take And to see this cave. And after talking about it to the manager of a nice tea shop I used to drink with last year we agreed to go there today. Until Tan heard about our plan that was. She didn't trust the tea-shop manager's driving ability and said anyway we couldn't go today or the next day due to rain making the roads slippery.

Bollocks.

But anyway she'd now arranged for A Zhong's younger brother to take us in A Zhong's car as he is a good driver apparently. To cut a long story short we eventually got there (apparently) to be told the cave had been blown up to make way for an electricity generation station. This would normally have pissed me off a lot but I saw what they had done; they had channeled about 25% of a mountain river and built a duct to take the water a mile or so to a generation station that powers a whole village/town in this rural area. So at least this is renewable energy, at the cost of a fantastic cave. Having said that I'm still not sure this is the same cave I visited back in 2005.

This may or may not be the cave I visited in 2005. If so it has been smashed open to provide hydro-electricity to the neighbouring towns, in which case I don't mind

View from this area

After visiting this non-cave, we went to Tan's hometown of Bangxu and had a meal of frogs and pork ribs. I do like the frogs but they are rather bony and it's everything rather than just the legs.

Then A Zhong's brother drove us to the cave I'd visited in 2003 during my first time in Guangxi. Then we had to hack our way through coarse grass to get to the cave opening, and don head-torches to see where we were going. We scrambled down some rocks before a friend put us in a small boat to take us to an area where you can walk.

Tan and me in the cave in 2003

Well it's all changed now. For 50 kuai per person (about a fiver) you can enter the cave. There are walkways and the cave is all lit up with green, red, blue and yellow lights to make it look unrealistic. There is a guide who tells you at every turn that this rock looks like an elephant and that one is called "mother rock" because it looks like a mother bending over a child. The guide pointed out one rock and said it was called something or other, and I disagreed and told her it was an octopus. She didn't look very happy about it but I persisted and eventually she accepted.

There were 3 other girls on the tour. And thought they were all 14 years old, as he does with every woman that has not yet given birth here. We got chatting to them, and it turns out that one is from Bangxu (and went to school with Tan's nephew) and she was taking two friends from Hunan on a trip. That made me realise that they must be 18 years old so I asked and they said yes so that's one in the eye for And. One was quite pretty but had a moustache.