Our second day’s adventure in Wulong County was to another part of the UNESCO World Heritage South China Karst at Furong Cave—a labyrinth of vast caverns jeweled with spectacular formations that have formed drop by drop in the heart of a mountain for millions of years. Of the few caves I’ve experienced in my life (Carlsbad, Timpanogos, Lehman, Cave of the Winds, Buddha Water Cave), this one has the biggest rooms and formations I’ve seen.
Spectacular can’t begin to describe the views of some of the rooms in this cave system when standing at the top and looking down across a vast expanse with stalactites and stalagmites reaching almost the entire size of the space and columns reaching hundreds of feet from the ceiling to the floor like massive trunks of giant redwood trees. The curtain formations in the first picture are several meters high and wide. It is hard to tell the scale in these pictures, but many of those formations are massive.
It is a very humid cave and some of the other rooms aren’t too glamorous, but those that are make the people with poor cave etiquette tolerable. I only wish there were as many don’t touch signs as there were don’t smoke signs. However, most people exploring the cave just pass through taking a handful of selfies along the way.
In addition to the beauty inside the mountain, the site is home to some monkeys, which are always fun to see in the wild. And, getting there is an adventure too. A city bus starts across the street from the long distance bus station and goes to a small village where two rivers meet. At this point, the end of the route, a shuttle van takes guests to the visitor center where they get tickets and catch the cable car to the entrance of the cave. This short journey spans some beautiful mountainside just behind a dam. On the slopes wild goats scramble on the rocks, while below, like everywhere else in china, there are local farmers working on the steep inclines.
All of the tourist center infrastructure looks relatively new and very nice. I am surprised that this magnificent treasure isn’t even mentioned in some tour guides, especially since it has been ranked as one of the great caves of the world (at least according to my research).
