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I like spelunking. I especially like to say the word “spelunking”. If I’m being totally honest, I can’t really say which I like better, and there’s a very good chance that I’ve come to enjoy visiting caves just so I can continue continually using the word “spelunking”.
And so it should come as no surprise that today’s ticket story is (ostensively) about spelunking:
On November 3rd, 2017 I had the great fortune to find myself in Yangshuo on mainland China. It was my first trip to the country (if you don’t count Taiwan, which Taiwan wouldn’t, though China would) and I enjoyed it way, way more than I had ever imagined I would.
Aside from being vast, efficient, and absolutely full of people, China has tons and tons of things to see, and on this day I saw lots of them.
As foreigners are not allowed to drive in China, I had hired a car and a driver for the day to usher me around to every site in sight. She took me to a bridge that was like eight hundred years old or something, a really pretty “old China” sort of village, a massive tea plantation, a mountain or two to climb, and ever so much more. The final attraction of the day was the only ticketed one (and the only spelunking-related one), so it shall be deemed the focal point of this ticket story:
While Silver Cave is by no means the largest, nor the deepest, nor the longest, nor the most interesting cave I’ve spelunked, I’m sure it will long stand as one of the more curious spelunking experiences of my life, and it was all due to the lighting.
As all spelunkers know, it’s really, really dark in caves. I’m talking all-the-way dark. Turn off the lights in a cave and you’ll find no difference between having your eyes open and having them shut tight. As a result, every tourist cave in the world is wired up with floodlights to allow spelunkers an ample view of the cave they are spelunking. But the Silver Cave did something different, something I’ve not seen before or since, and something that altered the spelunking experience significantly. And what was this innovation?
Coloured lights. Blinking, pulsating coloured lights instead of white ones.
My mercy…it brought so, so much to the experience. Every wall, every stalactite, every arch looked like a rainbow of cotton candy. It was breathtakingly beautiful.
But it got old pretty quick.
Call me a spelunking purist if you must, but the colours were simply too distracting, and they made it difficult to appreciate the natural beauty of the cave being spelunked. It made for some pretty stunning pictures but I sure am glad that coloured lights aren’t standard in the spelunk-tourism industry.
Something else spelunkers are quite familiar with is the generally cool, consistent temperature one finds while spelunking. Summer or winter, regardless of the hemisphere you’ll generally find it around fifteen degrees in a cave, but not this one. It was so swelteringly hot in there that when I neared the end of the tour I started clambering past the crowds in search of the exit, and the relatively cool air that was waiting for me outside.
At first I couldn’t understand why it was so hot in the cave, but the answer was all around me.
Did I mention that China is completely full of people? Well, it is. And by extension every tourist attraction in the country is likewise full of people, and the Silver Cave was no exception. There were literally thousands upon thousands of fellow spelunkers down there with me; like ten thousand or more? Everywhere you looked was another gaggle of spelunkers spelunking with their fellow spelunkers.
Spelunkers, spelunkers, spelunkers…the place was absolutely teeming with spelunkers!
I was actually getting near the brink of collapse when I finally emerged from the cave dripping with sweat, and right there – after at least two hours of spelunking – I found my driver patiently waiting to take me back to the hotel.
What a weird spelunk. Great day though.
(Oh, for those not familiar with the word, “spelunking” means “cave exploring”. Perhaps I should have mentioned that earlier.)
Todd Man Out 