A Little Piece of Taff.: Caves, Dinosaurs and Monkeys

Today I took Mike to Dan-Yr-Ogof Caves. I haven't been there since I was around 5, so I couldn't remember it at all. Safe to say if I had I would have thought twice about taking him. The caves were interesting and kinda cool, but the fact that we had to pay £27 pound to go in to see them kinda ruined it. We both thought £27 was a bit too expensive .

When we arrived Mike actually thought I had taken him to the wrong place because all we could see were giant dinosaur figures. It looked like we had driven into a Jurassic Park remake . But nono we were at the right place . After getting over the shock of the giant dinosaurs towering over our heads we got hit with the bombshell of the ticket prices. I already had my bank card out ready to pay otherwise I don't think I would have paid for them.

There were 3 caves there in total, the first one was real scary, I'm scared of the dark anyway so walking through a dimly lit cave put me on edge. I've seen way too many scary films so my brain just goes off on a tangent and I end up scaring myself. I also shouldn't have bothered straightening my hair because them caves have lots of leaks!

In the first cave there was a lot of stalagmites and stalactites which are formed over years and years and made up of a whole bunch of different minerals. The stalagmites grow up from the flour and the stalactites hang down from the ceiling. Sometimes they can join and form columns and pillars. There was one famous column in the first cave called the angel formation. Because it had the appearance of wings and the bottom half of an angel. I tried taking pictures in there but because of the light none of them came out very good, which was a shame.

The second cave was my favourite, it was called the Cathedral Cave. It was a lot more open and you could appreciate the size and just how fascinating the caves actually are. Towards the middle of the cave which was the furthest we could go there was 2 big waterfalls and so you had to walk over a bridge which ran through the middle. After crossing the bridge we got to a fairly big open space. One thing I was not expecting to see in there was a wedding arch. It turned out that people can get married there. How cool is that! Not that I fancy it myself but imagine if people start boasting about their weddings and how amazing they were you can just play the ultimate trump card and say ' I got married in a cave' That's got to win every time right?!?

The last cave was called the Bone Cave. I was expecting big things from this one. The cave itself didn't exactly live up to my expectation but the journey in and out of the cave more than made up for it. As we were walking up to it, there was a hard hat sign and a big box full of them which we had to put on before entering the cave. There was a few signs around saying low canopy and low roof but I wasn't expecting it to be that low. I only had to duck at certain times. Mike however he had to fold himself in half. It was so funny. he was so relieved to get into the cave and be able to stand upright. Inside the cave it was very small but inside they had put models and replica scenes of what would have been living and using the caves. there was a loud audio tape playing and then spotlights would come on in time with what they were talking about. A little way through the tape a spotlight came on behind us to show a 9 foot brown bear. It frightened the life out of me!
Walking out Mike kept banging his head on the canopy, I had to stop to have a little giggle half way. It was perfect that he was talking about how it was a good thing we were wearing hard hats and then SMACK.

After walking around some more crazy dinosaur figures we left the park and drove to a Monkey and Ape Sanctuary that I had seen signs for on my way to the caves. It was so random it was in the middle of nowhere. They had all different types of monkeys there from Baboon's to Lemur's to Chimpanzee's. They also had Wolves and Porcupines. I love monkeys I think they are so much fun to watch, they're so human like with their facial expressions and movements. One of the Chimps there liked to wear blankets and clocks so she was sat there with a blanket up over her head eating banana's. Their hands are so human like its scary. She started walking around at one point I cracked up she looked like E.T walking around. I could sit and watch them for hours.

Here's the website for the sanctuary check it out http://www.cefn-yr-erw.co.uk/

It was a lovely day all in all. I've got to keep thinking of places to take Mike too so that he doesn't go stir crazy.

Here are some of the pictures from our day, sorry the cave ones aren't the best.