Tu Lan Tour 3

Sunday 15th to Wednesday 18th February

Cao Quang Panorama

My first Tu Lan four day tour, joined by Ruth (who wanted to experience the tour before she does one on her own), eight customers, Tour Guide Thanh, Assistant Guides Uy and Yo, and six porters.

Hopefully I can describe the tour a bit better than last time, the day started early as we picked up the customers from various locations in Phong Nha before the hour and a half drive to the Oxalis centre at Tan Hoa, once there, Thanh gave a briefing and then I set up a practice abseil for all the customers, by the time this was over it was gone one pm and time to leave.

Bug seen during Day Three

From Tan Hoa we walked over fields to an unusual river crossing, unusual because at the crossing the river splits and sinks into two separate caves where it follows different routes and reunites somewhere underground before the final resurgence seen at the Hang Tien camp. After the river crossing we had a short uphill scramble to the entrance to Secret Cave, a short dry cave which emerges in (the) Hung Ton (valley). Lunch was at three pm at the entrance to Hung Ton Dry Cave before two hill climbs (Hung Ton Mountain and Mango Mountain) lead to the campsite in the La Ken Valley. The day finished with a visit to Hang Ken, which included a 200m swim. At this point we learned that one of the customers was not confident in the water, even with a life jacket on.

Hang Ken Entrance

Day two is the main caving day and started off with Tu Lan Dry Cave and an abseil into Tu Lan Wet Cave, from here we paddled downstream in the ‘boats’ for a few hundred metres to a waterfall and then turned around and paddled to the exit. The abseil went well, all the customers enjoyed it and seemed generally impressed by the ‘black space’ that they abseiled into. From the exit there was a short walk back to the Tu Lan campsite and then a further short walk to Hang Kim which started off with a climb up to a large dry cave but this drops down to water and three swims (the first two are optional) before the exit into To Mo Valley. The third and final cave of the day was Hung Ton Wet which was a swim to Hung Ton Dry where a fifteen metre fixed ladder climb gained a short dry passage to the exit where we had had lunch the previous day. After an hour and a half of walking in the rain, up and over a hill we arrived at our camp in La Ken Valley, a very picturesque spot, only slightly spoiled by the amount of cow dung splattered about.

Lunch at Hang Ken

The third day was a long day of walking, along La Ken and up a small hill to drop into Hung Dung, followed by a bigger hill into Hung Ran which is a beautiful walk by a river, the only cave of the day followed; this is a very short cave which involves a ten metre swim and emerges in Hung Ngai where a short difficult section of walking lead to an easy but long walk through a cultivated area and then uphill to a panoramic view of Cao Quang, after another hour of walking we arrived at the Hang Tien Camp which has a beautiful but cold resurgence pool. The final hour is along a riverbank where some of the river crossings can be avoided by log bridges, up to four metres above the ground, the porters use these, Ruth and I some of them, the customers none.

Log Bridge

The last day starts with a visit to Hang Tien, which has an impressively large entrance and takes about twenty minutes to walk to from the camp, once inside the cave we had about two hours of exploring before returning to camp for lunch and then walking out to the road for our lift back to Phong Nha.

Rainy River Crossing

Generally a misty and damp day with the rain increasing as we neared the road, having to sort out equipment in the heavy rain somewhat dampened the mood of the party! However, that was soon to pass, as it was New Years Eve.

Waterfall after the un-named Cave