The fascination of South African cave adventures

FFor a short time, each day, sunlight pierces the darkness of Cathedral Cave to reveal brilliant stained-glass coloured lichens. The cave houses a colony of rare bald ibis and was a site of worship for the Basotho people. It is an enormous cavern measuring 250m in length and 50m in depth located in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park.

Believed to be 2.2-million years old, the Wonder Cave in Kromdraai, Gauteng, has impressive dripstone formations. It is also home to a bat colony. A favourite Gauteng spelunking spot, abseil into the cave then get down and dirty to explore its depths.

The world-famous archaeological site, Makapansgat in Mokopane, Limpopo, boasts several caves. Here numerous fossils of Australopithecus africanus, our Ape-man ancestor has been found. A tour of the site starts at the Arend Dieperink Museum.

VView dramatic scenery over the ocean and the Walker Bay Reserve from the Klipgat Cave. In Hermanus, in the Western Cape, middle-Stone Age artefacts, bone tools and human remains were found in the cave.  

Estimated to be 2.3-billion years old, the Wonderwerk Cave, in Kuruman, in the Northern Cape has San cave paintings dating back 10 000 years. Recently, man-made artefacts of at least two million years old were found.

For a quintessential, “Berg experience”, camp overnight in one of the 60 plus caves where camping is permitted in the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg Park Mountain Range in KwaZulu-Natal. Many of the caves are rich in San rock art sites.