The Cave

Limestone caves are like McDonalds—they’re pretty much all the same and they’re pretty much everywhere.

The overbearing similitude of karst caves dissuades me from prioritizing them as tourist attractions—when you’re underground and it’s dark, you could be in France, Vietnam, Mexico, or the Luray Caverns of Virginia—all places where what’s happening on the surface is much more interesting and colorful.

In South Africa’s Klein Karoo, I was far more interested in watching baby ostriches hatch from their mammoth eggs than trudging single-file through a dark hole underground, being told things like, “Ladies and Gentleman, doesn’t this stalactite look like a big bag of golf clubs—can you see it?” And then we all strain our necks imagining golf clubs in the rock formations.

Driving the winding mountain road to Cango Caves, I almost turned around. This was much farther than I wanted to go, and the slow line of tour buses in my lane revealed what I had expected—I was heading into the gaping jaws of a Grade A tourist trap.

Some caves can be cool, yes, but most are really cheesy, with colored lights and tatty gift shops and corny tour guide narrative.

“Scientists have done studies and found that people exhaling in the cave damages the fragile rock surface, so I’d like to kindly ask you to all stop breathing,” began our tour guide, at the entrance. Muffled laughter echoed through the chamber, and then we began to be separated like cattle, by language.

There were enough Germans to form their own German-speaking regiment, and then we, the English speakers, got shuffled into a corner, where we stood in a circle around our guide, in the dark, and listened patiently to his comedic attempts while not seeing the cave.