The Last Full Day: On the second public day, and last day, of CITM, Peep again chose to join me for some sightseeing and let the others handle working the fair. We planned on visiting a site well outside the city and since our regular driver's prices seemed to be going up as the week progressed, Dragon located a new driver for us, saving us twenty percent of what the first driver wanted to charge. After breakfast, we met the new driver and headed out past the Stone Forest until we reached the Alu Ancient Caves.
Alu Ancient Caves: Similar to Diehongqiao Park, Alu Ancient Caves is a network of fully-developed karst limestone caves. Being further from the city of Kunming, Alu Ancient Caves was much less crowded but by no means less impressive than Diehongqiao Park. The caves got their name from a tribe of ancient people that lived within them.
The First Cave: We entered the cave and made our way to the first big cavern, which contained a giant image of Buddha and is used for religious worship. There was also a rather large opening in the ceiling of this part of the cave, letting daylight shine through.
Getting a Guide: Heading further into the cave we were stopped by a couple of women at a table set up along the path, but couldn't understand anything they said because it was all in Chinese. A third lady appeared that could speak enough English to allow us to figured out she was to be our guide through the cave. Even though she knew very little English, we still needed the guide because the lights in each section of the cave had to be turned on as we entered. They were on a timer and a couple of time went off before we were done admiring the cave formations (and taking pictures of them).
The Second Cave: Finishing our tour of the first cave, we emerged from within the mountain for a brief time before entering the second cave. We soon descended a staircase and stepped off solid ground and into a boat for a cruise on the underground river. Despite being able to easily see deep into the crystal clear waters of the river, we didn't see any of the transparent fish that live there. These fish, living only in the caves of China, have no eyes, no scales and are transparent, allowing their internal bones and organs to be seen through their skin. Very little is known about these rare fish, or the effects the lighting added to the caves may be having on them.
The Third Cave: After seeing the rest of the second cave, we again stepped outside but this time to hop on a chair lift to ride over to the last cave on our tour. It was more impressive cave viewing as we continued viewing the stalactites and stalagmites around us, including several that were semi-transparent. But the most famous ones in this cave were showcased with spotlights and a story told over speakers, but it was again only in Chinese. However, our guide was able to give us the gist of it by using her flashlight to point at the two formations and simply saying the words "man" and "woman". Near the end of the walk was a cavern sporting a waterfall. I am sure the falls were managed to allow them to flow for each visitor because they stopped when the lights went out on us one last time.
Back to Kunming: Once out of the third cave, we boarded a tram for the ride back to the parking lot where we met up with our driver for the long ride back to Kunming. By the time we arrived, Peep's coworkers were back from the expo and it was still early enough, so we found a second show to attend, this one with dinner included.
Dinner Show: Just as the first show we had seen had done, this show featured the dress and dance of the minorities in Yunnan. With twenty-five, Yunnan has the greatest number of minority groups of any province in China. The meal was made up of nine courses, each a signature dish from the tribe featured on stage as the food was served. Our table was in the second row, but the group who had reserved the table in front of us didn't show up until show was nearly complete, so we had an unobstructed view of the stage for the majority of the evening. The performance culminated with a fashion show.