Last day in Mbanza Ngungu dedicated to data acquisition and material arrangement.

Tomorrow we face a long and problematic return to Kinshasa, from where we will leave in the evening for Italy via Istanbul.

The outcome of the expedition is certainly positive. In addition to the video-photographic documentation of the major cavities conducted as part of the GeoRes4Dev project, which engaged us in the first part of the expedition, in the last two available days we explored one of the new sectors identified in the Ngovo-Ngungi system last year.

After climbing a waterfall shaft in the connecting section between the two cavities, we entered two new branches.

Following the active upstream that feeds the waterfall, after a few hundred meters of tunnels and collapse rooms, we reached a low flooded rolling mill. Through a fossil path downstream, we instead descended a series of wells and followed a fossil meander to a well that overlooks a lake fed by a lateral waterfall.

Overall, we have detected over 700 meters of new environments, leaving numerous fronts for future explorations in this underground system, which in recent years has become one of the largest in continental Africa.

The exploratory possibilities of this area are significant and its underground systems have morphological and geological peculiarities that would deserve in-depth study.

The expedition is taking place under the patronage of the Italian Speleological Society ETS and with the support of Ferrino Amphibious Gaibana Bee1 Vigea Fenix