Greetings fellow spelunkers! Jessica and I have been enjoying the sun in Puerto Rico while visiting the sights, sampling the local cuisine, and hiking in the rainforest. On our final full day of tropical weather, we did the only logical thing: head to where the sun don’t shine!
We travelled west from San Juan to Camuy River Cave Park to explore part of Puerto Rico’s underground river and cave system–the third largest underground river in the world. Amazingly, these caves were discovered until 1958. And, like most cave systems, much of the caves remain unexplored. No one is really sure how far they extend.
The Camuy River Cave Park was set up as a place where tourists could easily visit a dramatic section of the caves (for a small fee of course). The park restricts the number of people in the cave at a time, and we had heard that there were often long lines. We arrived early and still waited for an hour before the tour began.
After a short informational film, we climbed aboard a pedestrian cart and descended a sinkhole towards the cave’s entrance. I shot a quick (and bouncy) video as we rode down the path towards the caverns.
After exiting the carts, we walked down a paved but very VERY slippery path into the caves. We immediately began seeing stalactites, stalagmites, and columns.
The path went in a side entrance to the cave. This preserved the huge and dramatic main entrance to the cave. Scale is hard to capture in caves, but this mouth-like opening is over 100 feet wide. Enough light and moisture make their way through the opening for same small plants and mosses to grow.
Spoiler alert: caves are dark. As we made our way through the different chambers, we had only the artificial light installed by the park and our tour guide’s headlamp to guide us. That coupled with the guide’s description of the bats, spiders, and crabs that live in the cave made for a rather creepy experience. The random drips of water that occasionally hit your shoulder didn’t help either!
Our tour took us to many amazing formations. Water percolates through the rock and leaches out small amounts of minerals. Over millions of years, these small deposits can create hulking rock sculptures. With a little imagination visitors have named these formations for the objects they embody. We saw the face of an native american, a 10 foot high stalk of broccoli, and 30 foot tall wooly mammoth, teeth, and curtain drapery.
The most impressive feature of the caves was the central chamber. It is something like 150 feet tall and 250 feet wide. The photo does not do it justice. You have to imagine putting two full-size basketball courts into the photo.
To help with scale, compare that small opening in above photo with the photo below. Both photos are of the same entrance!
This opening delivers you into the middle of an enormous sinkhole. A sinkhole forms when the room of an underground chamber collapses. That can be a scary thought when you are standing under a 150 foot high ceiling of rock with a serious water leak.
The photo to the right is a better view of the sinkhole. You can see the entrance to the next part of the cave in the bottom portion of the photograph. From this spot, we could hear the river flowing well below us but could barely see it. It is amazing how deep these caves go on such a small island.
After seeing the sinkhole, we backtracked our way through the cave. Along the way we saw a freshwater cave crab.
After being in a cave for a little over an hour, it was nice to get back into the warm Puerto Rican sun. Even though we weren’t in the rainforest, the area was still incredibly lush and interesting.
Finally, on the way home, we stopped at a local eatery for some amazing local food including tostones! Who knew spelunking could cause you to work up such an appetite.