Walking through Harrison's Cave

The standard tour through Harrison's Cave in Barbados takes you underground in an electric car/train consisting of a drive vehicle towing additional passenger sections. We've done it several times over the years but over the summer I noticed an advertisement for a walking tour through the cave. I jumped at the opportunity and boy am I glad I did.

This is not water! it's a beautiful rock formation

Being able to walk through the cave was such a rewarding experience, you could take your time and look around without feeling rushed. We had an excellent guide, Jamal, who enthusiastically answered all our questions and was full of interesting information. Our kids brought one of their friends and together we had a ball learning about the cave, it's discovery, and development. We were allowed to hold a stalactite that had been removed from the ceiling (very heavy) and we tasted the water.

We all wore sneakers or good walking shoes and carried flashlights. The lighting in the cave is excellent but the flashlights were fun to shine around during our walk. The walking tours are for a limited time, every Saturday from August 11 - September 22, 2012.

Just in case you were wondering...
Stalactites hang down from the roof (they hold on tight), stalagmites grow up from the ground.

Harrison’s Cave is named for Thomas Harrison, who owned much of the land in the area in the early 1700s. In 1733, Harrison established a school that is today’s Harrison College. It’s not clear whether Mr. Harrison ever entered the cave that bears his name — but others certainly did.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, several expeditions ventured into Harrison’s Cave, none of which got very far. Because the natural entrances to Harrison’s Cave were hard to get to, and the cave’s inside passages presented many challenges, the cave remained an unexplored mystery until 1970.
Rediscovered and mapped in 1974 by Ole Sorensen, an engineer and cave adventurer from Denmark. He was assisted by Tony Mason and Allison Thornhill, two young men from Barbados.
After 1974 the Barbados government started developing Harrison’s Cave as a show cave and attraction, by excavating shafts and tunnels that could accommodate trams. The cave was opened to the public in 1981.
The entrance to the cave is through the Boyce Tunnel, named in honour of equipment operator Noel Boyce, the first member of the construction team to break through the bedrock and into the natural passageways of Harrison’s Cave.

Harrison’s Cave is a massive stream cave system at least 2.3 kilometres long.
The interior temperature is an average 27 degrees Celsius
Its largest cavern, the Great Hall measures 15 metres/ 50 feet high.
It is an active cave as it carries water. The stalagmites in the cave are growing by less than the thickness of a piece of paper each year — but that’s very fast in geological terms!

Maybe in the future we will try the eco-adventure tour where you crawl through parts of the cave not usually available to tourists!