April in Wanderlust: Kong Lo Caves

The Kong Lo caves are… wow! Incredible! 7.5km into a mountain! That’s over 4.5 miles, yo! INTO solid rock and water. And it’s pitch black! I kept having thoughts that Gollum should be spotted at any moment out of my peripheral vision and I would spot his beady little eyes with the light of my headlamp. OR that this would be the worse place to be in an earthquake. OR to be around rabid bats. OR for the boat to capsize in the pitch black on a river miles into a mountain. BUT it was thrilling and unbelievably interesting. I’ve never been to a place like it. It's an amazingly crazy, beautiful, wondrous, thrilling and scary place! The cavernous spaces inside are often like being inside a cathedral. Huge and vast spaces, small and pointy spaces, one right after the other. We boated upstream along the winding river and took in a little walk to see some stalactite and stalagmite formations lit up for us and continued upstream. Safe to say that my jaw was open wide during the entire trip. We’re not talking about some little cave, it was a place where people lived during the war and hid out in. Entire villages could easily hide there. At one point, we did run some ground, which I gotta admit is a bit scary. I think I was more worried about my backpack that had ALL of my electronics and memory cards in it, but after a few minutes of our guides pushed us off of the high spot, and we were back in the water. We finally reach the end of the cave and spot some light. Big glorious light with beautiful jungle all around it. Quite a spectacular relief of sight! Then our guides turned us around and went back through the caves to get back to the beginning.

Should you ever come to Laos, this is a MUST SEE. It’ll blow your mind!