Leaving

A China Caves Project

It grew dark and Zhang built a bed of logs which was surprisingly comfortable. The logs seemed to contour to my body. Maybe I was just tired after the excitement of the last few days. We managed to talk reasonably well together, considering we hardly had a word of each others language. He knew more English than I knew Chinese, but that wasn't difficult.

It was late when Tony and Kev exited the cave laden with all the ropes and tackle. They too were excited by the cave. There was a minor complaint that they had been left with the smallest, most deflated inner tubes and had to carry the most weight. Kev being the biggest member of the expedition at six foot three inches was almost sunk and Tony wasn't much better. Insult was added to injury the next day when we found the others had left the inner tubes in the village and we had to carry theirs out as well! It was too late to get to Xin Long and Zhang again gave up his bed for us, fed us and helped ferry the gear up to the road the next morning. The funniest thing was seeing Kev trying to squeeze under his ridiculously small mosquito net. In the end we all had a very uncomfortable night squashed in one bed, under the big net.

The next morning we had to leave Xin Long. It had turned out to be an exciting area, with friendly people and good organisation by the Chinese. I think everyone was sorry to go. While we were waiting for the bus and not sure if it would come, Zhang took me to a cave in the village. This one had a recent legend of a monster about it. According to the story, a green eyed monster lived there. In the 1950's, a hen was lowered down in a cage to it. The monster ate the cage and all! Next, a hot cooking pot was lowered down. There was a terrible noise and for days afterwards there was an awful smell from the hole. Whatever the truth of the story the hole turned out to be interesting, as stones thrown in rattled down for fourteen seconds. No accurate estimate of the depth could be made because the stones bounced on ledges and it was too overgrown to see into. In the end there just wasn't any more time left.

Deepest Cave