Before we went to the caves we stopped by a restaurant that had a picture of spaghetti on it. Definitely an alluring place here in China! I just have to write about this experience because I'm still annoyed by it. So there was a price on this spaghetti picture, but when we sat down and got English menus, the spaghetti was a whole 10 kuai more. Fishy. So we asked for a Chinese menu and lo and behold! Every single item on the Chinese menu was cheaper when compared to the English menu! We talked to the manager and told him that was so not cool, and he wasn't about to hear it and made a poor waitress deal with us. We said, "why are the prices cheaper on the Chinese menu?" and she said, "because the prices are different on the Chinese and English menus" which I guess is a valid answer. Anyway, the girl told us that we could get the Chinese prices so at least there's that. The food was good but if I remembered the name of the place I would tell you not to go there because clearly, they are prejudice against English speakers. But they can't outsmart us!
Anyway, after eating we made it to the caves. Outside the caves was pretty touristy (though we were still the only white people) and we had fun walking around a little bit.
Eventually we went into the cave and were awestruck by how GIGANTIC it was! It was seriously insane!
Even more insane was that there was a little river inside of the cave. On which we got to ride a boat. Probably one of the coolest things I've ever done! I felt like it was a Disneyland ride, but it was way cooler because it was a real cave! The only thing that would make it better would be a Splash Mountain type drop.
After the boat we went around and around, up and down stairs, just following the well-lit path. It even took us over a stone bridge built into the cave!
One thing that makes me kind of sad about caves in China is that they don't really care about preservation. They let you touch anything you want! Which is really too bad because every stalagmite/tite in reach is shiny black from people's hands. Of course, China can do whatever it wants, and it all still looked cool anyway!
After much exploration, we headed towards the exit of the cave. To exit we had to walk over a bridge on water, which alone was a cool experience.
We ended our cave experience with some ice cream bought right outside of it. Bailey cracks me up, he was digging around for the best ice cream, and decided on this one "because it's cute!"
We also saw some drums which of course we had to play.
We didn't really know how we were going to get home, because we realized that the buses had already left the area for the day. So we went to a main road and tried to hail a taxi or one of those tour minibuses. We didn't see many options, but finally a minibus pulled over and agreed on a pretty reasonable price. The moment we got inside we realized it was no tour bus! There was only one row of seats (which was fine because there weren't tons of us) and the rest of the bus was empty. We soon found out that just some random guy pulled over after work to help us out. WE HITCH HIKED FROM A SALESGUY. I had a good feeling though, and wasn't worried one bit.
The poor guy probably regretted his decision when we hit the traffic of the decade. We were at a dead stop for at least 90 minutes. Sometimes he would drive on the wrong side of the road and cut in front of other cars which was kind of scary and hilarious. He sang a lot and chatted with Katey over Google translate. He was working in Zhangjiajie for just a few months, but was about to head home to visit his parents! Nice guy. You will be happy to know that, after a long long while, the traffic did indeed clear up, and that we made it home in safety!
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