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Grand Cayman Travelog #10
Cayman Crystal Caves, Grand Cayman - Wed, 17 May 2023, 10:30am
Today we're on another group tour with colleagues from my company, similar to the group trip we took yesterday to hop in the water at Stingray City and Starfish Point. Today's trip is all on land. We're visiting a set of natural caves and then a big flower garden. Today's group is also smaller, 11 of us on the excursion vs. yesterday's 26.
The Cayman Crystal Caves (CCC) are a complex of over 100 natural caves. Most of them are prohibitively small for a person to enter; but there are several large caves that have been improved for touring. Our tour guide took us through 3 of them.
As we drove the last bit of the way to the cave complex on a dirt and gravel road we climbed over a small hill.
"I didn't know this island had mountains," I said jokingly.
Apparently I played right into one of the guide's little stories.
"The hill we've just crossed over is 42 feet above sea level," she explained in a Caribbean accent, her pronunciation of 42 sounding like farty two. "It's the second highest point on Grand Cayman. The highest is just a bit higher, though it's a manmade hill. It's a garbage dump locals have named Mount Trashmore."
But hey, it's time for caves— and pictures.
Some of the caves are completely below ground. This one has a few "skylight" openings— through which roots from the trees above descend. Decades ago neighborhood kids would drop ropes down through these openings, tying them around stout trees above, to shinny down & back up to explore the caves. Today there are spiral stairwells (visible at the lower right of the pic above) to make the caves fit for more tourists.
One of the caves is called Lake Cave. Its name is pretty obvious when you see this....
This underground pool is formed entirely by water dripping into the cave from above. It has no outlet; it drains only by evaporation. The water in the pool is highly alkaline yet also very clear because so little disturbs it. The spires that appear to be below the pool's surface are actually reflections of the stalactites overhead.
The guide encouraged our group to take pictures near the water as long as we didn't touch it. We did... as did almost everybody in the group.
Touring around the caves was a bit of a snooze for me except for that amazing pool. Limestone caverns have largely the same set of structures. One thing different about these caves from nearly all the others I've visited, though, is that they are not cool. In most caves the temperature drops to about 57° F even a short distance from the openings, even when the temperatures outside are significantly warmer. These caves are hot. Hot and humid. All of us were perspiring and sucking down bottled water.
The last bit to share about these caves is bats. Fruit bats nest near openings in these caves. Unlike other species of bats in caves I've visited they are not too timid around humans. I mean, they're not attacking us or anything; but they're perfectly happy going about their business of zipping back and forth over our heads eating bugs like mosquitos. Yay, mosquito eaters! They should have named them Annoying-Bug-Killing Bats instead of Fruit Bats (they do also eat fruit) to make it clearer to laypeople why this animal is a desirable part of our ecosystem.
Cayman Crystal Caves, Grand Cayman - Wed, 17 May 2023, 10:30am
Today we're on another group tour with colleagues from my company, similar to the group trip we took yesterday to hop in the water at Stingray City and Starfish Point. Today's trip is all on land. We're visiting a set of natural caves and then a big flower garden. Today's group is also smaller, 11 of us on the excursion vs. yesterday's 26.
The Cayman Crystal Caves (CCC) are a complex of over 100 natural caves. Most of them are prohibitively small for a person to enter; but there are several large caves that have been improved for touring. Our tour guide took us through 3 of them.
As we drove the last bit of the way to the cave complex on a dirt and gravel road we climbed over a small hill.
"I didn't know this island had mountains," I said jokingly.
Apparently I played right into one of the guide's little stories.
"The hill we've just crossed over is 42 feet above sea level," she explained in a Caribbean accent, her pronunciation of 42 sounding like farty two. "It's the second highest point on Grand Cayman. The highest is just a bit higher, though it's a manmade hill. It's a garbage dump locals have named Mount Trashmore."
But hey, it's time for caves— and pictures.
Some of the caves are completely below ground. This one has a few "skylight" openings— through which roots from the trees above descend. Decades ago neighborhood kids would drop ropes down through these openings, tying them around stout trees above, to shinny down & back up to explore the caves. Today there are spiral stairwells (visible at the lower right of the pic above) to make the caves fit for more tourists.
One of the caves is called Lake Cave. Its name is pretty obvious when you see this....
This underground pool is formed entirely by water dripping into the cave from above. It has no outlet; it drains only by evaporation. The water in the pool is highly alkaline yet also very clear because so little disturbs it. The spires that appear to be below the pool's surface are actually reflections of the stalactites overhead.
The guide encouraged our group to take pictures near the water as long as we didn't touch it. We did... as did almost everybody in the group.
Touring around the caves was a bit of a snooze for me except for that amazing pool. Limestone caverns have largely the same set of structures. One thing different about these caves from nearly all the others I've visited, though, is that they are not cool. In most caves the temperature drops to about 57° F even a short distance from the openings, even when the temperatures outside are significantly warmer. These caves are hot. Hot and humid. All of us were perspiring and sucking down bottled water.
The last bit to share about these caves is bats. Fruit bats nest near openings in these caves. Unlike other species of bats in caves I've visited they are not too timid around humans. I mean, they're not attacking us or anything; but they're perfectly happy going about their business of zipping back and forth over our heads eating bugs like mosquitos. Yay, mosquito eaters! They should have named them Annoying-Bug-Killing Bats instead of Fruit Bats (they do also eat fruit) to make it clearer to laypeople why this animal is a desirable part of our ecosystem.
