The best hour of the trip happens below the surface.
Which Benagil boat actually gets inside the dome. What a cenote swim costs once the entry fee is in. Whether an Iceland ice cave is worth $190 in February. Reviews of the cave trips you can book, anywhere in the world.
Four caves that decide where the rest of the trip goes.
A roof hole in the Algarve, a Yucatan sinkhole, a Croatian grotto that only glows for an hour, and forty metres under Naples. What each costs, and what the people who went down say.
01The roof holeBenagil Caves Speed Boat Tour with Sunset OptionBenagil by speedboat from Portimao. The dome is two minutes of the trip and the reason nobody minds the wet seat.
02The sinkhole swimChichen Itza, Cenote, and Valladolid TourChichen Itza in the morning, then a cenote deep enough to jump into. The Yucatan day almost everybody books first.
03The blue hourBlue Cave Small-Group Boat Tour from DubrovnikBisevo from Dubrovnik. The light inside only works around midday, and only when the sea lets the tender in.
04Under the streetNaples Underground Entry Ticket and Guided TourForty metres below Naples, down 130-odd steps into aqueducts and wartime shelters. Fifteen degrees, all year.
Italy hides its caves under churches, cities and the Capri cliffs.
No country in this catalogue offers more ways down. Rock-cut catacombs under Rome and Naples, the Colosseum service tunnels, a sea grotto you enter lying flat in a rowing boat, and cave houses in Matera people lived in until 1952.
What going underground actually costs, from a $15 crypt ticket up.
Every cave trip on the site, sorted by what you hand over. The cheap end is not the weak end: some of the best hours below ground cost less than lunch.
Show caves, crypt and catacomb tickets, temple caves, the short Algarve boat runs.
Half-day kayak and speedboat cave circuits, cenote swims with lunch, black-water rafting.
Glacier ice caves by super jeep, private grotto boats, the multi-day Iceland runs.
- 1Colosseum: Underground and Ancient Rome Tourfrom $160
- 2Colosseum Underground, Arena & Forum Tourfrom $157
- 3Katla Ice Cave and Super Jeep Tourfrom $194
The best cave in a country is often only open from the water.
Half the caves worth a morning have no path in. A boat noses through a gap barely wider than the hull, or a kayak slips under an arch a boat cannot clear. This is the biggest group of trips on the site, and the one the weather cancels.
A cave sits at ten degrees in August and closes when the swell gets up.
Almost every cave trip has one gate on it, and it is rarely the price. Show caves hold eight to fifteen degrees whatever the surface is doing, so a layer goes in the daypack in August. Sea caves need calm water and get cancelled the morning of. Glacier ice caves exist from November to March and nowhere near summer. Temple caves want knees and shoulders covered. Anything described as a squeeze or a crawl means exactly that.
Six countries where the caving is the reason to go.
A limestone coast cut into domes, a peninsula of flooded sinkholes, cities built over their own quarries, glaciers that open a new cave every winter, an island chain of grottoes, and karst towers you row through.
The cave trips more travellers book than any others.
Every cave trip we have reviewed →Demand tells you something a photograph cannot. These are the trips that earn the slot, with what each costs and how long you are underground.
1
Chichen Itza, Cenote, and Valladolid Tour
Review of the Chichen Itza, cenote, and Valladolid tour from Cancun, with pricing, stops, guide tips, transport advice, and honest drawbacks.
From · $45
Read our review →
2
Naples Underground Entry Ticket and Guided Tour
from $21
3
Chichen Itza, Cenote & Valladolid Tour with Tequila and Lunch
from $34
4
Colosseum: Underground and Ancient Rome Tour
from $160
5
Underground Vaults Tour
from $32
6
Benagil Caves Speed Boat Tour with Sunset Option
from $20
7
2.5-Hour Benagil Caves & Dolphin Watching
from $40
8
Oldtown, Medieval Underground & Dungeon History Tour
from $31
Three caves with no substitute anywhere else.
Limestone is everywhere. A roof that opens onto a private beach, a ceiling of living light, and a glacier that rebuilds its own tunnel every winter are not.
The Benagil Roof Hole
The sea has hollowed a dome out of the cliff at Benagil and then punched a circle clean through the top of it, so a shaft of light lands on a crescent of sand inside. Boats are banned from landing and cannot enter in any swell, which is why the kayaks and stand-up boards get in on mornings the speedboats turn back. Go at the start of the day: by noon the queue of hulls outside the mouth is its own weather system.
- 1Benagil Caves Speed Boat Tour with Sunset Option★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 11,663 reviews
- 22.5-Hour Benagil Caves & Dolphin Watching★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 10,710 reviews
- 3Benagil Sea Caves Speedboat Adventure Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 6,546 reviews
The Waitomo Glowworms
Arachnocampa luminosa hangs fishing lines of silk from the roof of the Waitomo caves and lights itself blue to bait them. The boat leg is done in silence and without lamps because noise and light both switch the display off, so there is no photography and no talking, and it lasts about eight minutes. The dry walking caves nearby carry the same larvae with more geology and fewer rules.
- 1Glowworm Caves Guided Tour by Boat★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 4,908 reviews
- 2Glowworm Caves Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 2,611 reviews
- 3Waitomo Caves: Labyrinth Black Water Rafting Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 1,673 reviews
Vatnajokull Ice Caves
Meltwater bores a tunnel through the underside of a glacier every summer and it freezes into blue glass every autumn, which means the cave you walk into in January did not exist last spring and will be gone by May. Guides re-survey the entrances each season, access is by super jeep off the ring road, and crampons and a helmet are handed out at the gate. Nothing runs from April to October.
- 1Katla Ice Cave and Super Jeep Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 2,110 reviews
- 2Vatnajökull Ice Cave Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 2,046 reviews
- 3Ice Cave Tour and Glacier Hike★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,746 reviews
Four caves that will not fit you in on the day.
Most of this catalogue can wait until you have seen the forecast. These four run on capped slots, a two-month season or a boat that only sails in flat water, and they sell out from the other side of the world.
- 01Katla Ice Cave and Super Jeep TourThe season runs November to March and the caves are re-cut by the melt every year. Outside those months there is nothing to book.
- 02Glowworm Caves Guided Tour by BoatBoats go in on timed departures with a hard cap per boat, because the display switches off if the cave gets busy or loud.
- 03Blue Cave Small-Group Boat Tour from DubrovnikThe tender only enters Bisevo in flat water and the light inside works for about an hour around midday. Both have to line up.
- 04Colosseum: Underground and Ancient Rome TourThe underground level runs on named timed tickets in small groups, and the allocation is released well ahead.
By kind of cave
A cenote is a cave with the roof already fallen in.
Rain ate the Yucatan limestone from below until the ceilings dropped, and the holes filled with groundwater clear enough to read a watch through. Open cenotes are a swim, semi-open ones keep a stone lid and a shaft of light, and the fully closed ones are a cavern dive with a torch. Life jackets are not optional and the sunscreen has to come off first.
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