The Reed Flute Cave (Chinese: 芦笛岩; pinyin: Lúdí Yán) is a landmark and tourist attraction in Guilin, Guangxi, China. It is a natural limestone cave with multicolored lighting and has been one of Guilin’s most interesting attractions for over 1200 years. It is over 180 million years old. The cave got its name from the type of reed growing outside, which can be made into melodious flutes. Reed Flute Cave is filled with a large number of stalactites, stalagmites and rock formations in weird and wonderful shapes. Inside, there are more than 70 inscriptions written in ink, which can be dated back as far as 792 AD in the Tang Dynasty. These aged inscriptions tell us that it has been an attraction in Guilin since ancient times.[not in citation given] It was rediscovered in the 1940s by a group of refugees and has since received many VIPs.
Reed Flute Cave
What make Reed Flute Cave so marvelous are the stalactites, stalagmites, and columns that can be found inside the cave. While walking through the cave, visitors feel like they are being transported to different environments. Some sections seem like a forest of crystal trees, while others seem like underground mountain ranges and even cities.
Presenting an exciting and historical destination, Batu Hill is a series of caves and cave temples located in the north of Kuala Lumpur. This series of attractions is located close to a village that also has inherited the name Batu Caves.
Its significance can only be realized when one becomes aware of the fact that this is one of the most important Hindu shrines that is located outside India and annually attracts over 1.5 million pilgrims a year which earns it a status of being one of the most visited religious sites in the world.
The caves were originally created around 400 years ago and were instigated by the Teuman people who were the indigenous population of the area. It was this culture that also used these caves as a means of shelter.
Despite its rich history and past significance, visitors today can still marvel at the impressiveness that presents itself from these caves. The Batu Caves temple consists of three primary caves in addition to several other smaller ones.
The biggest of these is referred to as Cathedral Cave or Temple Cave and features several ornately decorated Hindu statues inside. Visitors to this cave will also find a range of paintings housed here as well. However reaching this temple is no easy task as visitors must first climb 272 steep steps before they become privy to the wonders that are housed inside.
At the base of this cave are two other attractions which are known as Art Gallery Cave and Museum Cave. Both of these two are more artistically inclined and present. Once again an array of statues and painting related to Hindu religion are housed inside the cave. Together these two caves tell the story of Lord Murugan's victory over demon Soorapadam and the story of Rama.
Beyond these religious caves there are also several other caves which are undeveloped and feature various vegetation and plant life which are also worth a visit.
The Batu Caves is just one of the many attractions that are easily accessible from the urban heart of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur. The city presents a host of accommodation options that are suitable to a host of different needs. Guests looking for a discount hotel in Kuala Lumpur will not be disappointed with the offerings of Citrus Hotel Kuala Lumpur that is not only economical, but also offers an impressive array of comforts and benefits.
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El Calafate is the capital of Santa Cruz province in Andean Patagonia, Argentina and it’s located at the shores of Argentino Lake, becoming the central point of all the excursions in the zone, from Los Glaciares National Park, Chaltén and Torres del Paine National Park, in Chile. It has been named El Calafate by a bush with blue fruits that usually grows in this sector.
El Calafate is the closest urban zone to Los Glaciares National Park, who was named Patrimony of Humanity by UNESCO in 1981, for its natural beauty. This is a wonderful place for adventure tourism and outdoor excursions like trekking, navigation, horseback riding and others. El Calafate is also the beginning of Patagonian Ice Fields and the first stage of the amazing glacier circuit.
Inside of El Calafate there is also Los Glaciares National Park Administrative Division, the starting point of every tour and excursion to Los Glaciares National Reserve, located at 80 kilometers away from the zone.
Inside of Los Glaciares National Park, the visitors will be amazed by the natural wonders like the worldly famous Perito Moreno glacier and its detachments, where impressive mass of ice falls into de water, catching the attention of many tourists who try to catch the exact moment of the fall.
The visitors can discover this wonderful argentinean park using the artificial footbridges created to watch de glaciers or navigating through the waters of the De Los Témpanos channel and Argentino and Viedma Lakes. This is the closest journey you can take to the glaciers, which allows to see them in all their magnificence.
Los Glaciares National Park counts with 47 impressive glaciers and some of the most important are Onelli, Upsala, Spegazzini and Seco.
Another attraction of El Calafate is the zone of El Chaltén, located at 200 kilometers away from it. Chaltén is called the trekking capital of Argentina because it has the famous Fitz Roy Mount, a difficult and attractive mountain that every year is visited for climbers of the entire world.
In El Calafate there is also adventurous tourism. The Santa Cruz river is perfect for rafting and fishing. In the waters of the zone you will find different species such as rainbow trout, salmon and lake’s trout.
Another interesting place of Santa Cruz is the famous “Hands Cave”, which is located in the rocks of Pinturas River. This is a cave with ancient paintings, representing scenes of hunting and superposed hands in some kind of magical ritual of the old natives of the zone.
El Calafate is also one of the best places to observe the flora and fauna of Patagonia, in the Natural Reserve of Nimes Lagoon, located at Solitaria Island in Argentino Lake. Here you will find animals like red fox, hare, condors, eagles, flamingos and swans in their natural environment.
El Calafate mixes in one place the most incredible nature and vegetation, besides the impressive beauty of the glaciers, making of it the perfect escape for the ones who look for adventure, to discover new places or simply rest and relax.
Read more: http://www.articlesbase.com/destinations-articles/el-calafate-and-glaciers-in-argentina-667661.html#ixzz1UuKOmhKr
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Skocjan Caves is a cave system in Slovenia. Due to its exceptional significance, Škocjan Caves was entered on UNESCO’s list of natural and cultural world heritage sites in 1986. International scientific circles have thus acknowledged the importance of the caves as one of the natural treasures of planet Earth. Ranking among the most important caves in the world, Škocjan Caves represents the most significant underground phenomena in both the Karst region and Slovenia. Following its independence, the Republic of Slovenia committed itself to actively protecting the Škocjan Caves area; for this reason, it established the Škocjan Caves Regional Park, Slovenia and its Managing Authority, the Škocjan Caves Park Public Service Agency.
Škocjan Caves is, above all, a natural phenomenon of global significance, ranking side by side with the Grand Canyon, the Great Barrier Reef, the Galapagos Islands, Mount Everest, and others. Ranking among the most important caves in the world, Škocjan Caves represents the most significant underground phenomena in both the Karst region and Slovenia. Škocjan Caves was also entered on the List of Ramsar wetlands of international importance on 18 May 1999. Together with the underground stream of the Reka River, they represent one of the longest karst underground wetlands in Europe.
The Reka River disappears underground at Velika Dolina into Škocjan Caves and then flows underground for 34 km towards the Adriatic Sea surfacing near Monfalcone where it becomes the source of the Timavo River. The view of the big river, in the rainy season as it disappears underground, on the bottom of Velika Dolina, 160 m under the surface, is both majestic and frightening.
The exceptional volume of the underground canyon is what distinguishes Škocjan Caves from other caves and places it among the most famous underground features in the world. The river flowing through the underground canyon turns northwest before the Cerkvenik Bridge and continues its course along Hanke's Channel. This underground channel is approximately 3.5 km long, 10 to 60 m wide and over 140 m high. At some points, it expands into huge underground chambers. The largest of these is Martel's Chamber with a volume of 2.2 million cubic m and it is considered the largest discovered underground chamber in Europe and one of the largest in the world. It is interesting to note that an underground canyon of such dimensions ends with a relatively small siphon: one that cannot deal with the enormous volume of water that pours into the cave after heavy rainfall, causing major flooding, during which water levels can rise by more than one hundred metres.
The first written sources on Škocjan Caves originate in the era of Antiquity (2nd century B.C.) by Posidonius of Apamea and they are marked on the oldest published maps of this part of the world; for example the Lazius-Ortelius map from 1561 and Mercator's Novus Atlas from 1637. The fact that the French painter Louis-François Cassas (1782) was commissioned to paint some landscape pieces also proves that in the 18th century the caves were considered one of the most important natural features in the Trieste hinterland. His paintings testify that at that time people visited the bottom of Velika dolina. The Slovenian scholar Janez Vajkard Valvasor described the sink of the Reka River and its underground flow in 1689.
In order to supply Trieste with drinking water, an attempt was made to follow the underground course of the Reka River. The deep shafts in the Karst were explored as well as Škocjan Caves. The systematic exploration of Škocjan Caves began in 1884 of a speleology division. Explorers reached the banks of Mrtvo jezero (Dead Lake) in 1890. The last major achievement was the discovery of Tiha jama (Silent Cave) in 1904, when some local men climbed the sixty-metre wall of Müller Hall. The next important event took place in 1990, nearly 100 years after the discovery of Mrtvo jezero (Dead Lake). Slovenian divers managed to swim through the siphon Ledeni dihnik and discovered over 200 m of new cave passages.
