16 OCTOBER 2006

Back to Diary Page

Recce to the east

Ged, Harvey, Eddie, Zhanghai with the film crew and other guides set off for the west of Lichuan City on a mission to explore several areas. The first port of call was the town hall of the local muncipality to obtain the necessary permissions and greet the officials there.

The day started overcast with somebody saying it could rain..... and they were right. After collecting guides at the village of Anleping we descended a slippy slope into the nearby doline of Lou Shui Dong. The entrance is under a cliff with a waist deep pool. Our guide Hou climbed with great ease across the right-hand wall of the obvious cave entrance with Ged and Harvey in tow. As time was short and and there were many other sites to go we returned despite the passage continuing. After passing back through very wet undergrowth we investigated a large fossil entrance up and round to the left and about ten minutes walk from the wet entrance we had just visited. Our guide stood on a large boulder and with his hand symbolically pointing into the cave. Ged explored down a bouldery slope into the cave to establish that this was also an excellent lead.


Que Long Dong
North of the village of Jingui we marched for fifteen minutes to a large deep doline with a path round the side. The doline was approximately 50 metres deep and had an obvious route down towards the sound of a river. This is probably connected to the previous site. No attempt was made to descend the doline.

Hei Dong
On the way back to Lichuan we turned off at a town. A drive of about half an hour took us to a remote agricultural area and Hei Dong, a stream sink at the side of paddy field which was explored by Ged and Eddie with our guide.

Da Keng is nearby and obviously has the same water as the previous cave which flows out of one entrance and immediately sinks again. This seems to have very good prospects.

After lunch, which was its usual excellent affair, we toured the kitchen and ate some maggots (dried). There were bowls of cat fish, and a vat of a small pilchard fish or similar. All these heated on an efficient coal-fired Aga with a beautiful glowing burner. Since it was raining and our clothes were damp we felt chilly, so it was pleasing to warm our hands over the bright coals - it felt wonderful.
We departed with the chiefs giggling at us, then out into the rain we drove. Our drive to the next area was over very rough roads and less impressive scenery. Eddie nearly trod on a very large toad about seven inches long and four inches wide. Various traverses round paddy fields followed to navigate through the impressive and intricate field network.

Afterwards we passed the time with the locals before departing to the hotel.


Dry river beds and jungle recces

Bruce, Dr. Niu, Deng, Tony and our guide departed 9.30am on a wet day. They stopped by the roadside just short of Chang Chao village to investigate some cave features along the cliff face, however these all turned out to be insignificant. Our clothes were sodden from thrashing through the undergrowth. We were then taken by the guide back to Milk Wei Cave (Yen He Dong) having been promised that we would be led to large shafts and Tiankengs in the vicinity. This was not the case! Instead we were shown two small shafts in the dry streambed that 'flowed' out from the aforementioned entrance.


Tony set amongst the slippery boulders of the streambed as the rain pours down


Disappointed by the first shaft estimated at 12m deep, we then continued to Bei Dong (White Cave), the other exit from Teng Long Dong system which was located high above the streamway to gain a GPS reading . Our guide then took us to 3-Dragon Cave passing through two through caves en route (Chuang Dong). The final one of these had a protective block wall to deter former invaders. We visited the local farmer here to ask about other caves in the area but he said "Mayo Dong" (No caves) but he did remember the Belgians visit in 1988. In his fields he was grew tobacco plants with pink flowers on top and corn on the cob (maize).

Then we returned to the road by a path from his farm and drove back up the road where we met a local man who took us to three smallish Yorkshire-type caves in the cliff face above Chang Chao Village. He needed a machete to access these. We explored all three for a short way and took GPS readings at their entrances.


Chang Chao villager kindly showed us the overgrown cave entrances above the village

After changing our wet clothes at the hotel, we all went to the showcave entrance of Teng Long Dong and Bruce and Tony surveyed to the drip line of the fossil cave from a previously made GPS fix.

We had dinner at the showcave restaurant then returned to Lichuan for a meeting with the recently formed local adventure club whose members include several police officers. The Mayor of Lichuan who Bruce and Tony had bumped into at the showcave was also in attendance. The police then took us to a Karaoke club to round off the night with some beers.


Ged gets rounded up by the police (Adventure Club)


Professor Yan, Bruce and Mr. He by the Adventure club 4x4