Golden Horseshoe Expedition: Phi Phi Caves
Technical divers explore sea caves on Phi Phi Island
Phi Phi, Thailand – Big Blue Tech arrived in Phi Phi this morning to begin 2 days of sea cave diving in an attempt to clearly identify the caves in this area as potential for future expeditions.
Phi Phi island is best know for the location of “The Beach” movie starring that guy from Titanic. The story is actually based on Ang Thong Marine Park but they used Maya Bay to create the set for the beach.
Arriving on Phi Phi island we were surprised by how rural the environment is with no motorcycles or trucks to help transport equipment which meant the annoying task of humping all our gear along the pier to the small carts which would take us through the winding streets to Princess Divers who would host us for the next few days.
Once we were finally checked in to our hotels, sweating, irritated and hungry we had a small bite to eat and then set off on a long tail to Maya Cave which was reported as a stunning cave that goes in over 100m.
We found the cave quite easily with little reference and conducted one dive inside and it is not a cave it’s a cavern. It’s very hard to get into an area where you cannot see natural light. The size and design of the cave is also so vast that there’s really very little risk to call it a cave. However, you could get into a point where it’s linear depth is beyond 40m so in that respect it is a cave.
The large entrance leads to a huge cavern that is split in the middle by a pillar several metres across. The left side has a low ceiling 2-3m from the floor and has many interesting rock formations and stalactites, passing these the floor is littered with pieces of broken stalactites.
The right side past the split is more spacious with several metres from floor to ceiling but also with impressive stalactites. 100m from the entrance the two sides meet again at the back wall between huge stalactites.
There are more “caves” to check out but with the epic logistics and the utter emotional process to get to the dive site we just wanted to go back to our hotel and have a cold beer. Andy Cavell was more than happy to hear that as he was forming a speech impediment where every third word in his sentences was either “pub” or “pint”
Tomorrow’s plan would be 2 more dives at different dive sites reported to be good caves, hopefully we’ll find something to warrant the effort to get here.
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Mats Lennartson, Press Contact, +46707902468, mats.lennartson@poseidon.com
