Amazing Caves in Costa Rica Offer True Caving Experiences

Caving in Costa Rica is an extreme adventure sport on the rise. While many adventure tours in Costa Rica like white water rafting and hiking tours are extremely popular, caving, or spelunking, is a growing adventure sport for travelers on vacation in Costa Rica.

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Costa Rica is home to some truly exceptional caves. From the caves in Barra Honda National Park,which require tourists to descend a massive ladder to enter the cave, to the privately owned Venado Caves near the Arenal Volcano, Costa Rica has some fine caving adventures to offer spelunkers.

The Venado Caves in the Arenal area of Costa Rica are magnificent and massive. Boasting an incredible array of cave creatures, the Venado Caves are home to bats, monochrome frogs, spiders, and crickets. There are incredible limestone stalactites and stalagmites to see, and a river runs through the cave as well.

At Barra Honda National Park in Guanacaste you will find the most extreme caving tour in Costa Rica! Over 70 million years in the making, this enormous network of caverns will leave any caver breathless. Since the caves have not been altered for tourists, those touring the caves get a truly genuine spelunking experience. First, adventurous tourists are fitted with a rappelling harness as extra security as they descend the massive aluminum ladder into the mouth of the cave. Once inside, the tour guide will lead travelers through some of the most incredible caverns in Costa Rica. With amazing limestone formations such as soda straws, popcorn, curtains, stalactites, and stalagmites, the caves in Barra Honda National Park are stunningly beautiful and wonderfully untouched by mass tourism. This is a one-of-a-kind experience for anyone looking to go caving in Costa Rica.

For those looking for a true Costa Rica adventure, there are las Cuevas de Damas (Damas Caves), located just outside of Quepos and Manuel Antionio. Named for the beautiful river that runs just outside the cavern’s main entrance, these caves offer one of the most incredible caving experiences you could ask for. Many caves have been altered to accommodate tourists. They have guardrails, electric lighting, and man-made pathways to help tourists along their caving exploration. Not the Damas Caves!

The Damas Caves near Manuel Antonio Costa Rica are beautiful and completely unaltered by man. The passages are full of stalactites and stalagmites and there are chambers with 100ft high ceilings. Aim the beam of your flashlight at the ceiling and witness the thousands of bats fluttering through the caves. The Damas Caves are also home to many cavern creatures, such as troglobite spiders, insects, cockroaches.

Discovered in 1925, the Damas Caves, located just outside of Quepos, were explored in 2006 by the GRUPO ESPELEOLÓGICO ANTHROS (GEA). A member of the NSS also surveyed the cave and created a Grade 5 map for exploring the area. The Caves of Damas are dry and horizontal, making them a much more accessible to beginners and children than most of the caves in Costa Rica.

The Caves of Damas are located less than 20 Kilometers north of the popular family vacation destination of Manuel Antonio Costa Rica. The area surrounding the caves boasts some gorgeous wildlife and birds, and the natural river pools outside of the cave are perfect for swimming.