Bonaire (2) – Interact with Caves!

One of my favorite parts of Bonaire is caving! I texted a local guide Amazing Bonaire on the Christmas day and asked if we can go caving with him. He said yes! When we arrived at the site and found that he came out just for us. That’s touching! We got a special private tour of two very cool caves. The caves have zero people but just us and bats :). His name is Jim and ran this tour company with his brother Kenny. Jim asked for $180 cash for 3 people, but we ended up giving him $220 and still thought we should give him more 🙂 He talked to me like we are good friends. Later, he spent half an hour on the phone and chatted with me on how to select and treat Goggles 🙂

Jim came with this cool jeep. He said that the entire island has many caves and they hide in these bushes.

We arrived at the entrance for the first cave :). Here is how we climbed down. The cave is very dark so Jim gave each of us a powerful flash light.

The entire island is formed with corals. The rainwater seeps through the ground and interacts with CO2 on these coral-based limestones. They form stalactites, stalagmites, columns, fans, curtains … Jim asked us to not touch any of the stalactites, as it took 100-300 years to grow half an inch. The grease on our skins will stop them growing for a while.

I like caves as much as the night sky, as they are the meters of time. Jim said this cave is about 80 millions years old. Early Bonaire culture, primarily the indigenous Caquetío (Arawak) people, left significant archaeological evidence in caves, like rock paintings of pre-colonial life before the Spanish and Dutch arrived. We saw bats, crabs and cockroaches in these caves 🙂

The cave extends to miles and you will need to climb through this tiny hole until you see the next big room. Jim said he has explored it all and climbed hours 🙂

The second cave is even cooler. Here is what the entrance looks like, and we climb down following a rope. It’s a fun climb.

After some minutes of climbing, we found the water! It is crystal clear fresh water from the rain and it is not as cold as I thought :). Jim said there was some fish at some point. These fish do not have eyes due to the darkness of the cave.

We changed to our snorkeling gears and Jim took us to a narrow water tunnel and then we found a bigger room. The water is much deeper. For the first time, I saw these stalactite and stalagmite structures under the water and it looked like ancient relics quiet laying beneath me. Such a wonder excites my brain like when I saw Saturn, Jupiter and Mars in my telescope for the first time.

From here, you can also hold your long breaths to swim under a big rock to another, even deeper-water room, where you can dive down to see that the fresh water meets ocean water. But he does not take kids to swim under the rock so I did not go.