![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.2){kind=small}
Silver Fox Caves
Posted on 2005.07.17 at 14:16Current Mood:
sleepy
Yesterday we took a day trip to the Silver Fox Caves, about 2 hours outside of Beijing. The bus ride was long and boring, then we had to haggle our way into a yellow minibus and ride another hour to the cave--- the bumpiest, most painful car ride of my life. We picked the absolute worst minibus in existance for an hour long ride.
The caves were pretty cool though. We were the only people there other than the employees, our minibus and desperate vendors. There were like 4 old woman with dried fruit or something trying their best to get us to buy something. The townish thing was set up for loads of tourists but looked really depressing because there weren't any present. By the time we got out of the cave there was one other group of Chinese tourists but it was still a sad showing.
The cave is about 5000m long and 1000m of it is an underground river. We walked up and down stairs, taking pictures of the stalagtites and formations. When I was younger my dad took me to Mammoth Cave and this cave was nothing in comparison but still pretty interesting. It wasn't as well preserved, expensive, and there were no safety regulations- which made it more exciting.
The most interesting part was the "boat rides" through the underwater section. First, our vessel was a rusted piece of metal bent into a rowboat. A man with gloves led us around by pulling on ropes over head, making the boat go forward. This series of ropes let him turn around and manuver about the river fairly well, but it looked like hard work, since there were three people sitting in the boat plus the guy. We went on four different sections of the stream and it was really amazing. The water was crystal clear, ice cold and frighteningly deep. I wanted to swim, and the boat guide said I could but Alex and Mark said no. The cave was a very comfortable temperature, about 13 degrees celcius (58-60F). the three of us were dressed for summer, I had a tank top and flip flops. Our guide had on two pairs of paints, three shirts, a coat, a scarf and boots. We think she over did it a bit- it's not that cold. We watched her get ready for our tour, it took her like 15 minutes to get on all the extra clothing she apparently needed to guide us through the freezing cave. We talked through at a comfortable temperaute without incident.
Then, at one point we got onto a rickety looking train/coal shaft like contraption that took us near the top of the cave- plus about a 100 stairs to the actual door. The cave was a coal shaft until they discovered all the other cool stuff and I think the tracks we were using was orginally for coal mining.
I'll post the pictures later. Today I managed to get about 25 of the Longqing Xia pictures up so take a look when you get the chance. Next time I'll work on the Caves, plus we have pictures of our daily bike ride, the kids, and the life of Alex and Veronica.
Stay tuned.
Mark returns to the States tomorrow. Alex and I take a vacation to Inner Mongolia next weekend. We have to actually start planning that. We think we are going to a really remote place in inner mongolia that is a 9 hour bus ride away. I can't wait for a few days of horse back riding and camping.
The caves were pretty cool though. We were the only people there other than the employees, our minibus and desperate vendors. There were like 4 old woman with dried fruit or something trying their best to get us to buy something. The townish thing was set up for loads of tourists but looked really depressing because there weren't any present. By the time we got out of the cave there was one other group of Chinese tourists but it was still a sad showing.
The cave is about 5000m long and 1000m of it is an underground river. We walked up and down stairs, taking pictures of the stalagtites and formations. When I was younger my dad took me to Mammoth Cave and this cave was nothing in comparison but still pretty interesting. It wasn't as well preserved, expensive, and there were no safety regulations- which made it more exciting.
The most interesting part was the "boat rides" through the underwater section. First, our vessel was a rusted piece of metal bent into a rowboat. A man with gloves led us around by pulling on ropes over head, making the boat go forward. This series of ropes let him turn around and manuver about the river fairly well, but it looked like hard work, since there were three people sitting in the boat plus the guy. We went on four different sections of the stream and it was really amazing. The water was crystal clear, ice cold and frighteningly deep. I wanted to swim, and the boat guide said I could but Alex and Mark said no. The cave was a very comfortable temperature, about 13 degrees celcius (58-60F). the three of us were dressed for summer, I had a tank top and flip flops. Our guide had on two pairs of paints, three shirts, a coat, a scarf and boots. We think she over did it a bit- it's not that cold. We watched her get ready for our tour, it took her like 15 minutes to get on all the extra clothing she apparently needed to guide us through the freezing cave. We talked through at a comfortable temperaute without incident.
Then, at one point we got onto a rickety looking train/coal shaft like contraption that took us near the top of the cave- plus about a 100 stairs to the actual door. The cave was a coal shaft until they discovered all the other cool stuff and I think the tracks we were using was orginally for coal mining.
I'll post the pictures later. Today I managed to get about 25 of the Longqing Xia pictures up so take a look when you get the chance. Next time I'll work on the Caves, plus we have pictures of our daily bike ride, the kids, and the life of Alex and Veronica.
Stay tuned.
Mark returns to the States tomorrow. Alex and I take a vacation to Inner Mongolia next weekend. We have to actually start planning that. We think we are going to a really remote place in inner mongolia that is a 9 hour bus ride away. I can't wait for a few days of horse back riding and camping.
