Extreme Sports Tourism
The cave is a popular vertical caving destination. The high side of the mouth is covered with heavy foliage, so cavers most often fix their ropes on the low side, where bolts have been fixed into the rock and the area is clear of obstructions. Rappelling to the floor takes about twenty minutes, in which time abseil equipment and rope can heat up to hazardous levels. Climbing back out may take from forty minutes to more than two hours. A person without a parachute would take almost ten seconds to freefall from the mouth to the floor, hence the pit is also popular with extreme sports enthusiasts for BASE jumping. An average-sized hot air balloon has been navigated through the 160-foot (49 m) wide opening and landed on the floor below. Base jumpers can get out in about 10 minutes using an extraction rope. (video: Journey to the Earth's Core-History Channel). Base jumping, or being extracted by rope is no longer allowed. Local villagers are focused on protecting the birds.
Read more about this topic: Cave Of Swallows
Famous quotes containing the words extreme, sports and/or tourism:
“Individualism, pushed to anarchy, in the family is as ill- founded theoretically and as mischievous practically as it is in the State; while extreme regimentation is a certain means of either destroying self-reliance or of maddening to rebellion.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“I looked so much like a guy you couldn’t tell if I was a boy or a girl. I had no hair, I wore guys’ clothes, I walked like a guy ... [ellipsis in source] I didn’t do anything right except sports. I was a social dropout, but sports was a way I could be acceptable to other kids and to my family.”
—Karen Logan (b. 1949)
“In the middle ages people were tourists because of their religion, whereas now they are tourists because tourism is their religion.”
—Robert Runcie (b. 1921)