Spelunking

is only the greatest word in the English language. And speaking of caves, we saw the coolest one yesterday...Kong Lor Cave in Southern Laos. I thought that I was caved out after The Amazing Cave in Halong Bay and the Buddha Cave near Luang Prabang, but this cave puts all other caves to shame.

To fully experience Kong Lor, we took a boat up the river that carved this 7km (about 4 miles) tunnel through the mountain. Actually, we really didn't see much of the cave at all, because it was so dark. But I feel like we got a good idea of it...long and dark and cool, with bats. Basically...it's ginormous! And since we were going through it during the dry season, we got to sense it at its largest.

OK, so... at first, I didn't think it looked particularly scary, but that's because there were a whole bunch of people and boats milling around at the mouth. Once we got in our boat, and it was just us, our guides, and their headlamps, the cave got a whole lot spookier. And bigger. And blacker. And ghostlier. And like someone was going to cue the theme from The Twilight Zone.

I felt like I was on one of those dark rollercoasters at Disneyworld, and something was going to light up all of a sudden or jump out to scare me. Or like I was Indiana Jones, or in Redwall on a quest, or in Journey to the Center of the Earth (which, I guess, in a way, I was). Or riding the River Styx into the Underworld, or searching for the lost city of Atlantis...which, I think that if anyone were to ever find Atlantis, it would be found by traveling through a cave much like this one.

Because the river was so low, we had to hop out in a few places so our guides could push the boat over the shallow areas, which was nice because the water was so cold! At one point, we even hopped out of the boat to tour around one of the dry parts, which looked like something out of The Little Mermaid--all of the mites and tites were so nautical and cartoon-y looking.

Again, remember, this cave is completely undeveloped, and although Liz had a headlamp and our guides had headlamps, to walk at all in this cave was to trust my feet completely and just feel my way around. But the sensory deprivation made the whole experience that much more intense and awesome.

Finally, after about an hour going upriver, we approached the other mouth of the cave. We had to get out once to ford some rapids, and the water near the mouth was still warm from the sun. When we left the cave, I felt like Dante, emerging from the Inferno into Paradise, with the jungle and the mountains rising up on all sides, and everywhere surrounded by the sunshine and the beautiful blue sky.

Literally, it was paradise. We approached the shore, near a horde of lily-white butterflies, and as we landed, they shot into the air. They didn't fly off, though; rather, they floated there in the shadows, fluttering their wings.

Of course, we had to go back through the cave to get to our van, so after a little while, we hopped back into the boat and headed off. The trip back through the cave was much quicker, since we were going with the current. We saw one boat pass us with no tourists, just a dude, his lamp and his boat, which makes Liz and I think that people who live on one side of the mountains actually use the cave's passage to cross to the other side.

Imagine having 7km of pitch-black, ice-cold river as your regular commute!