Last full day on our boat cruise along the Yangtze River.

This morning we moored up at Fengdu and headed off on a tour of the Snowy Jade caves close by.

Our coach trip with a group of Chinese tourists proved interesting as their guide proceeded to talk nonstop for over 30mins without taking a breath and more importantly without translating a word into English.

When we eventually arrived we were treated to more stunning mountain view’s at the entrance to the famous caves.

Before going inside we had to walk past a small monkey sanctuary sitting alongside the cave entry point.

Here there were a large family of young and old monkeys eating, drinking & playing as we walked by.

The monkeys were extremely agile and were hanging off a small rope that sat over a large drop to the river below. Despite this we saw them pushing and pulling each other for a better spot to chew on the pumpkins tied upside down.

We also caught a young baby monkey going solo and entertaining us with his hide and seek game as we watched on.

The caves are 1,644m in length and comprise six scenic areas. Due to erosion in the surrounding karst landscape the caves are growing at a faster rate than anywhere else in China.

Snowy Jade Cave is spread over three levels and includes the 8m Stone King’s Flag and the 4m high Stone King’s Shield features that are the largest of their type in the world.

The range of stalagmites and stalactites was incredible, notably the pure white jade looking rock formations.

The shapes and colours created within the caves were so diverse and made our visit more interesting, despite not being able to understand/hear much of what our guide was talking about due to technical/translation difficulties!!

The tour around the cave helped to get us back into some level of fitness, as we walked up and down the cave system, passed over twenty different points of interest.

The formations of the rocks that continue to grow at fast (35cm per century!), make for the most impressive shapes and colours, mostly white in this cave and really capture your imagination.

We’ve been fortunate to see a number of cave systems through our recent travels, notably in Vietnam and felt that the Chinese were some of the prettiest, if not the largest and helped with the nicknames they’ve been given, such as iceberg and pigs ear as you’ll see from the photos below.

It’s fair to say some of the weird shapes that have been created don’t seem possible even in nature and look almost artificial.

After an enormously enjoyable morning cave exploring, we returned to the boat and we continued our journey along the river.

Tonights stopping point is Chongqing, the biggest city in China at over 20 million and the final destination on our boat tour.

Tomorrow we leave after breakfast and head via 1hr bus journey, 5hr bullet train and finally another 1hr coach to Yangshuo our last but one stopping point before we arrive at our final destination Hong Kong in 4 days time.