The best part of the trip is under the ground.
How many steps down before the chamber opens. Which sea caves the swell shuts on a bad morning. Whether a cenote swim needs a wetsuit or just a life vest. Reviews of the cave trips you can actually book.
A sea cave, a salt mine, a swim in a sinkhole, a chamber under a city.
Four days out that show what going underground actually feels like, and what each one asks of your knees, your nerve and your budget.
- 01The one everyone flies forPortimão: Benagil Caves Speed Boat Tour with Sunset OptionA speedboat through the Algarve cliffs into Benagil, where the roof has fallen in and the light lands on the sand. Twenty minutes of coast, then the chamber.
02The deep oneKrakow: Wieliczka Salt Mine Tour with Entry TicketNine floors below Krakow, through salt chambers carved into chapels with chandeliers cut from rock salt. Around 800 steps down, a lift back up, and it is 14 degrees all year.
03The swimChichen Itza, Cenote, and Valladolid TourPyramid in the morning, then down a ladder into a cenote for the cool water. No sunscreen before you get in, and the vest stays on.
04Under the ColosseumColosseum: Underground and Ancient Rome TourThe hypogeum below the arena floor, where the animals and the lifts were kept. Small groups, timed entry, and no way in without the guided ticket.
Six countries that do the underground better than anywhere.
Sea caves cut into Atlantic cliffs, a limestone shelf drilled through with flooded sinkholes, Roman burial galleries, an Adriatic grotto that turns the water electric, salt chambers nine floors down, and blue ice under a glacier.
Benagil three ways: speedboat, small boat, or your own kayak.
The famous chamber is a ten-minute hop from Portimao or Albufeira, and how you arrive changes the whole morning. Boats cannot land inside any more, so getting your feet on that sand means paddling.
The caves you can only reach with an engine behind you.
Sea caves keep their light for a couple of hours and their calm for even less. These are the boat mornings that get inside, and the ones that turn back at the mouth when the swell is up.
A cenote is a cave with the roof gone and the water still in it.
The Yucatan is limestone all the way down, drilled through with thousands of flooded sinkholes. Some are open pools you walk into; some are pitch-dark caverns reached by a wooden ladder. Rinse the sunscreen off first, the vest is not optional, and the water sits around 24 degrees whatever the day is doing.
The cave trips more travellers book than any others.
Every cave trip we have reviewed →Timed entries, small-group caps and boats that only run in flat water. These are the ones that sell their morning slots weeks out.
1
Chichen Itza, Cenote, and Valladolid Tour
Spend a long day traveling from Cancun or the Riviera Maya to Chichen Itza, Cenote Chichikan, and Valladolid. Guides such as Cesar, Luis, Edwin, Hugo, and Antonio add lively Mayan history on the bus and at the ruins. Expect a buffet lunch, a cold swim, and possible shopping stops.
From · $45
Read our review →
2
Naples: 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
Edinburgh: Underground Vaults Tour
from $32
6
Portimão: Benagil Caves Speed Boat Tour with Sunset Option
from $20
7
Krakow: Wieliczka Salt Mine Tour with Entry Ticket
from $33
8
Albufeira: 2.5-Hour Benagil Caves & Dolphin Watching
from $40
Italy keeps its best rooms below street level.
Everything underground in Italy →
Naples has an aqueduct, air-raid shelters and a Greek theatre under the shops. Rome has burial galleries running for kilometres and the machinery pit under the arena floor. All three need a guide and a slot booked in advance.
Catacombs, and what you can photograph
Tufa corridors cut on several levels, cool and dry, lit just enough to walk. Cameras are usually off underground, so bring your eyes rather than a lens. Shoulders covered at the church-run sites.
Forty metres down, and one narrow section
The Greco-Roman aqueduct system, later a wartime shelter. The optional narrow passage is about 60cm wide and lit by candle. There is a wider route round it, and nobody minds if you take it.
The Colosseum hypogeum, guided only
The tunnels where the lifts and cages sat, opened only on a guided ticket with a small cap. Uneven brick underfoot, no shade on the way in, and the slots go before anything else in Rome.
Steps, temperature, wet or dry: the four things that decide a cave day.
Almost every cave sits between 8 and 16 degrees whatever the surface is doing, so a warm layer beats a sunhat. Count the stairs before you commit, ask whether you end up in the water, and remember that a sea cave runs on the swell forecast, not the sunshine one. Dry, level, lift-served caves exist; so do 800-step descents and 60cm squeezes.
What an hour underground actually costs.
Every cave trip on the site, grouped by price. A show cave with a ticket desk is cheap; a glacier, a boat or a guide-only chamber is not.
Show caves with a ticket desk, catacomb entries, city undergrounds and the short boat runs out of the Algarve.
Full mornings: cenote circuits with lunch, salt mine plus transfer, small-group grotto boats, glowworm caves.
Ice caves under a glacier, private guides through the hypogeum, and the day trips that cross a country to get there.
Wieliczka is a cathedral, and it is made of salt.
Seven hundred years of digging left chapels, lakes and a ballroom carved out of rock salt, nine levels below a town outside Krakow. You walk down around 800 wooden steps and ride a mining lift back up. Fourteen degrees, three kilometres on foot, and a jumper you will be glad of.
Every salt mine day →
The blue caves work on light, not on weather.
At Bisevo and Kotor the sun comes in under the rock and throws the colour back up through the water, which is why every one of these boats leaves early. A flat sea gets you inside; a metre of swell and the skipper shows you the entrance from outside and turns for Hvar instead.
- 1Blue Cave Small-Group Boat Tour from Dubrovnikfrom $84
- 2Blue cave, Mamma Mia and Hvar, 5 islands speedboat tourfrom $111
- 3Split/Trogir: Blue Cave, Mamma Mia, Hvar and 5 Island Tourfrom $109
Three things that only happen with rock over your head.
Beaches and viewpoints exist everywhere. A collapsed cave roof that drops a spotlight onto sand, fresh water sitting in a limestone shaft, and a ceiling of live larvae do not.
The hole in the roof at Benagil
The sandstone dome collapsed at some point and left a circular opening straight up to the sky, so at mid-morning a column of light lands on the beach inside. Boats can no longer tie up on that sand, which is why the kayak and stand-up trips exist. Go before eleven: later the sun comes off the angle and the chamber goes flat.
- 1Portimão: Benagil Caves Speed Boat Tour with Sunset Option★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 11,663 reviews
- 2Albufeira: 2.5-Hour Benagil Caves & Dolphin Watching★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 10,710 reviews
- 3Portimão: Benagil Sea Caves Speedboat Adventure Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 6,546 reviews
Swimming in a sinkhole
Rain filters down through limestone for decades before it collects in these shafts, which is why the water is glass-clear and colder than the Caribbean fifteen minutes away. Guides insist you rinse first, because sunscreen and repellent stay in a closed system for years. Most sites hand out a life vest and mean it.
- 1Chichen Itza, Cenote, and Valladolid Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 24,293 reviews
- 2Chichen Itza, Cenote & Valladolid Tour with Tequila and Lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 15,789 reviews
- 3Cancun: Chichen Itza, Cenote & Valladolid Tour with Lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 6,722 reviews
A ceiling made of larvae
Arachnocampa luminosa hang fishing lines of mucus from the rock and glow to draw insects into them. The boat goes quiet and dark because noise and torchlight make them switch off. It reads like a star field about two metres above your head, and no photograph anyone takes of it works.
- 1Waitomo: Glowworm Caves Guided Tour by Boat★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 4,908 reviews
- 2Hobbiton & Waitomo Caves Guided Day Trip from Auckland incl lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,677 reviews
- 3Te Anau: Glowworm Caves Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 2,611 reviews
Four cave trips that will not wait for you.
Plenty of show caves take walk-ups all afternoon. These four run on capped guided slots, a winter-only window or a boat timetable, and turning up on the day gets you a look at the entrance.
- 01Colosseum: Underground and Ancient Rome TourThe hypogeum opens only on a guided ticket with a small group cap. Those slots go long before general Colosseum entry does.
- 02From Vik: Katla Ice Cave and Super Jeep TourNatural ice caves are a winter thing. The season runs roughly November to March, and a warm week can close a cave at a day's notice.
- 03Krakow: Wieliczka Salt Mine Tour with Entry TicketEntry is by timed guided tour in your language, and the English slots on a summer morning fill first.
- 04Waitomo: Glowworm Caves Guided Tour by BoatSmall boats, fixed departure times and a hard cap on each one. There is no standing at the back of this.
By country - where the caves are
By kind of day - boat, ladder, staircase or headlamp
The newest cave trip reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
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From Granada: Skip-the-Line Nerja Cave and Frigiliana
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From Geysir: Snowmobiling & Ice Cave on Langjökull Glacier
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