Caves you can actually book. Under the jungle, under the cliffs, under the city.
Which Benagil boat gets inside the dome and which one only circles it. What a cenote day out of Cancun really costs. Whether the catacombs under Naples beat the ones under Rome. Reviews of the cave trips, cenote swims and underground walks you can book today.
Under the jungle
Chichen Itza, Cenote, and Valladolid Tour
★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · from $45
A flooded sinkhole on the road back from Chichen Itza.
Under the city
Naples Underground Entry Ticket and Guided Tour
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · from $21
Greek quarries, Roman aqueducts and a wartime shelter, all under one street.
Under the cliffs
Benagil Caves Speed Boat Tour with Sunset Option
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · from $20
Into the Algarve sea caves by speedboat, with the sunset run costing the same.
A blue cave, a set of vaults, a glowing ceiling and a paddle in.
Four caves that do four completely different things to you. What each one costs and how long you are actually underground.
01The Adriatic oneBlue Cave Small-Group Boat Tour from DubrovnikOut of Dubrovnik to the cave on Bisevo, where midday sun comes up through the floor and the whole chamber turns silver-blue.
02Bricked up for a centuryUnderground Vaults TourThe vaults under South Bridge were shops, then slums, then bricked up and forgotten. Half an hour of Edinburgh nobody sees from the street.
03The ceiling glowsGlowworm Caves Guided Tour by BoatWaitomo by boat, in the dark, under a few thousand larvae. Guides ask for silence and no lamps, because the light goes out when the worms are disturbed.
04Paddle in on your ownHalf-Day Emerald Cave Kayak Tour with Optional Hotel PickupA kayak into Emerald Cave on the Colorado, where the water reads jade against red sandstone. Half a day out of Las Vegas.
Most caves worth seeing are reached by water, and the hull decides the day.
Speedboat, kayak, mask and fins, or a wide-decked cruiser with shade and a ladder. What you board decides how far inside you actually get, how wet you end up and what it costs to be on it.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · Benagil Caves Speed Boat Tour with Sunset Option
Speedboat runsFast and wet, inside the arch before the big boats arrive.
Kayak entriesPaddle through the mouth yourself, where tenders cannot follow.
Mask and finsSwim into the chamber and read the walls from the water.
Boat daysShade, a swim ladder and several caves on one ticket.
All 156 boat trips into caves →
What going underground actually costs.
Every cave trip on the site, sorted by what you pay. The entry tickets come in under the price of lunch; the chartered sea-cave days take a chunk out of the week.
Entry tickets, catacomb walks, show caves and the short speedboat runs along a coast.
Full days: cenote circuits out of Cancun, five-island Adriatic runs, glowworm caves with transfers.
Private guides underground, chartered hulls and the capped-number permits that sell out first.
- 1Colosseum: Underground and Ancient Rome Tourfrom $160
- 2Colosseum Underground, Arena & Forum Tourfrom $157
- 3Katla Ice Cave and Super Jeep Tourfrom $194
Six countries sell more cave trips than everywhere else combined.
Flooded sinkholes under the Yucatan jungle, collapsed sea domes on the Algarve, burial galleries under two Italian cities, blue caves off the Dalmatian islands, karst rivers in the north of Vietnam and Greek grottoes you can only enter by hull.
The cave trips more people book than anything else.
Every cave tour on the site →Booked more often than anything else here, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Chichen Itza, Cenote, and Valladolid Tour
Spend about 12 hours with a bilingual guide such as César, Luis, Edwin, or Hugo, traveling from Cancún, Playa del Carmen, Tulum, or nearby hotels to Chichén Itzá, Cenote Chichikan, and Valladolid. Expect a long bus day, a buffet lunch, a required life jacket at the cenote, and limited free time in Valladolid.
From · $45
Read the 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
Under Rome, under Naples, under Edinburgh: the caves you walk into.
Burial galleries cut into tufa, bricked-up vaults, quarries that became air-raid shelters, whole houses carved out of a hillside. Cool the whole year, usually about an hour, and the only kind of cave trip that swell can never cancel.
A cenote is a cave that already lost its roof.
Rain ate through the limestone until the ceiling fell in, and the Maya built towns around whichever ones held fresh water. The shafts near Tulum are open to the sky with tree roots hanging to the surface; the ones inland are still caves you swim into behind a lamp.
Every cenote day out →
Benagil is one cave, and thirty hulls a day queue for it.
The dome with the hole in its roof sits ten minutes east of Portimao. Landing on the sand inside is banned now, so the only question left is which boat gets closest and how long it holds there. Kayaks and paddleboards still go in under their own power.
Three things a cave does that nothing on the surface can.
Coastlines and canyons are everywhere. A ceiling of living light, a jungle full of freshwater shafts and a city stacked four floors below another city are not.
The Glowworm Ceiling
Arachnocampa larvae hang sticky fishing lines from the roof of the Waitomo caves and glow blue-green to pull insects into them. Boats drift through in the dark with every lamp off. The light dies the moment the larvae are disturbed, which is why the guides are strict about torches, flashes and talking.
- 1Glowworm Caves Guided Tour by Boat★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 4,908 reviews
- 2Te Anau: Glowworm Caves Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 2,611 reviews
- 3Waitomo Caves: Labyrinth Black Water Rafting Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 1,673 reviews
The Cenotes
The peninsula has no rivers. Rain dissolved the limestone into thousands of flooded shafts instead, and every Maya town was built around one that held water. Some are wide-open pools with roots trailing to the surface; others are still proper caves, entered down a ladder with a lamp on.
- 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
- 3Early morning Chichen Itza Tour: Cenote and Tequila Tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 6,657 reviews
The Catacombs
Roman law kept the dead outside the walls, so early Christian communities cut galleries into the soft tufa and stacked burials four levels deep. Miles of it survive under both cities, at a steady fourteen degrees, reached by a staircase behind an ordinary church door.
- 1Catacombs of San Gennaro Entry Ticket & Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 7,941 reviews
- 2Capuchin Crypts and Catacombs Tour with Transfers★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 6,456 reviews
- 3The Original Roman Crypts and Catacombs Tour with Transfers★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 4,896 reviews
Four cave trips that will not be there on the day.
Most of this can be arranged from the hotel the night before. These four run on permits, seasons and sea states that take no interest in when your flight lands.
- 01Benagil Caves Speed Boat Tour with Sunset OptionSmall boats only get inside the dome on a calm sea, and the calm mornings are spoken for first.
- 02Glowworm Caves Guided Tour by BoatNumbers underground are capped and the boats leave on fixed departures. Walk-ups get turned away all summer.
- 03Katla Ice Cave and Super Jeep TourThe ice caves are cut fresh each winter and melt out again by spring. Roughly November to March, and that is the whole season.
- 04Colosseum: Underground and Ancient Rome TourThe underground level runs on a separate capped permit from the arena ticket, released in blocks rather than daily.
What a cave asks of you before it lets you in.
Underground is a dress code and a weather report at once. Sea caves cancel on swell, not rain. Cenotes ban sunscreen and send you through a shower first. Batu wants your knees covered and two hundred and seventy-two steps out of you. Ice caves only exist in winter. And almost every cave sits near fourteen degrees whatever the surface is doing, so pack the layer you were not going to bring.
In Vietnam the cave is the river, and somebody else does the rowing.
At Trang An the sampans are sculled by hand, often with feet, through kilometres of flooded tunnel under the karst. Halong does the same thing at sea with a cruise attached. Neither is a walk, both are shallow and slow, and the ceiling gets close enough to duck for.
- 1Ninh Binh Full-Day Tour from Hanoi to Hoa Lu, Tam Coc & Mua Cave Via Boat & Bikefrom $33
- 2Ninh Binh, Bai Dinh/Hoa Lu, Trang An, & Mua Cave Tourfrom $46
- 3Hanoi/Ninh Binh: 1-Day Tam Coc/Trang An, Hoa Lu & Mua Cavesfrom $45
Cancun, Playa, Tulum, Chichen Itza: the fortnight most people do first.
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