- 09/04/2020
A group of 11 British experts led by Howard Limbert, a British cave specialist credited with initial explorations of the now famous Son Doong Cave, the world's largest natural cave, revealed the surprising discovery last Sunday following a 20 day expedition last month.
"Despite many difficulties, the cave exploration program in Quang Binh in 2020 was a great success, measuring the total length of the newly discovered caves at more than 10.5 km," Limbert said.
The caves also contain underground rivers, and are totally untouched. In Bo Trach District, three of them were found – Doc Co (554.6 m long), End Cave (51.5 m) and Dry Vom (413 m).
In Quang Ninh District four caves were found – Nuoc Ngam (3,872 m), Nuoc Lan 3 (1,919 m), Hung Thoai (460 m) and Coincidental Cave (100 m).
The remaining five discoveries are in the district of Minh Hoa – Three Horned Viper (194.8 m), Phu Nhieu 4 (2.012 m), Cha Ra (314 m), Thoang Lip (137 m) and Ma Lon (463 m).
In recent years, the British expert team has visited the central province of Quang Binh annually. It is the first time in just 20 days that the party has discovered the "new" caves. So far a total of 417 discoveries have been registered in Phong Nha-Ke Bang, a UNESCO heritage site.
A team leader plunges into a cave in Quang Binh Province. Photo courtesy of Howard Limbert .
This year, one of its members flying in on the same Vietnam Airlines flight VN54 from London that landed in Hanoi March 2 with Hanoi's first Covid-19 patient, a woman who tested positively on March 6, setting off a spate of other infections, has made the task of the expedition more challenging.
Five others who had come into close contact with the participant were therefore quarantined which affected the schedule of the expedition. Luckily, all Covid-19 tested negative, Limbert said.
Phong Nha-Ke Bang was built in 2000, and is sometimes referred to as the "Kingdom of Caves" for the magnificent specimens it hosts.
The 900 square kilometer national park, which was listed by UNESCO as a world heritage site in 2003, is home to more than 300 caves and grottoes dating back about 400 million years. Around 30 caves are now open to tourists, who created a tourism boom and gave the once war-torn province much-needed revenue.
Foremost among these is Son Doong, who hogged the international spotlight since it opened to tourists in 2013, four years after members of the British Cave Research Association completed their exploration and declared it the largest in the world.
Local resident Ho Khanh first found the cave in 1991, and almost 20 years later rediscovered it, opening it up for exploration.
Earlier this year the British magazine Conde Nast Traveler named Son Doong as one of the seven wonders of 2020 to explore.
Source : Vnexpress International