Post #6

"Gigantic River Cave Revealed in Laos". One of the largest and most spectacular river caves in the world; the Xe Bang Fai river cave was finally explored and mapped out this year on an expedition sponsered by national geographic and led by veteran caver John Pollack. The Xe Bang Fai river cave was little known before Pollack's crew spend ten day in the dark cave taking pictures and looking at the spectacular formations throughout the cave. The cave was first discovered by the western world in 1905  by a French explorer on a bamboo raft. Ever since then explorers have been wanting to study the cave but Laos constant war and political unrest kept them out. After their expedition one of the men of Pollack's expedition, Bob Osburn is making a detailed map of the cave, while the rest of the group is planning to go back to the cave to explore more in 2010. I found this article interesting and I was glad that there are still big natural wonders around the world that have never really been explored and mapped out. I was also suprised by this because there are so many maps of small towns and really unimportant places all over the world but nobody has been able make a map of an important natural place like the Xe Bang Fei river cave until now.  I also was suprised to find out that nine mile river caves exist around the world and it makes me wonder if there are any big river caves in the US that I could go to.