Harrison's Cave Barbados

Typical Bajan housing off the beaten track   

We had read that one of the absolute must see locations in Barbados is Harrison’s Cave. Situated in the centre of the island we decided that the best way to get there was by bus. Leaving our dinghy in the central pool in Bridgetown, we walked to the bus stop station and, almost without missing a stride, got onto a bus which immediately set off at speed heading north. Corners were a cue for acceleration, brakes seemed to be an unnecessary addition to the vehicle and cars a hindrance to progress, needing to be overtaken at the earliest opportunity, preferably on a blind bend. There was absolutely no wasted time on the journey and we disembarked, ears ringing from the driver’s liberal use of the bus’s horn, about 15 minutes earlier than we had expected at the bus stop close to the cave. Fortunately, the 10-minute walk to the cave, past typical Bajan housing and small holdings, gave us time for our heart rates to settle – just getting to the cave was an experience!

Looking down on the visitors’ centre for Harrison’s Cave (L) and the lift down into the gully   

Coming from the road you arrive at the upper visitors’ centre, buy your tickets and then are directed to the lifts. These are not to go into the cave but to drop down to the lower visitors’ centre situated in one of Barbados’ gullies. It is a spectacular site surrounded by the sort of vegetation which used to cover the whole of the island.

We were ushered into a mini cinema to watch a short film about how Barbados was formed with the seabed being pushed up 4 times which explained why we could now see the remains of coral reefs on the high points of the island. Over the years, the heavy rain the island experiences has worked its way through the rock dissolving and eroding as it went to form the cave we see today. The tours have been enhanced over the more recent years and now the site is totally ‘green’ with electric vehicles, which are charged by solar energy, taking visitors on the main tour. We bought tickets for this normal tour but we would really have loved to have taken the alternative [Ed: but very expensive] tour, crawling through the smaller confines and waterways in the caves, equipped with miners’ hard hats and head torches.

The cave is named after Thomas Harrison, who owned the land the cave is under in the 1770s. Over the years, several expeditions ventured into the cave but it took almost 200 years before the it was fully explored by a Danish engineer, Ole Sorensen, and a local man, Tony Mason who together completed a full map of the cave. The pictures above show part of the initial piece of the cave which he explored crawling through the waterway between the stalagmites.

We were whisked around on our electric transport listening to our guide give us a very comprehensive description of what we were looking at.

The tunnels have been expanded in places to fit the electric cars but the original scale of the cave varied from tiny passageways just large enough to crawl through to huge vaulted caverns. With the benefit of modern floodlighting we were able to see the true size of these larger caverns and fully appreciate just how many stalactites and stalagmites have formed in them.

The stalactites and stalagmites and all the other weird and wonderful shapes formed in calcium deposits by the water flowing/dripping down and along the sides of the caves generally grow incredibly slowly. Indeed, it is normally said that the formations grow by less than the thickness of a piece of paper each year. Interestingly, however, where the tunnels have been expanded to fit the electric cars, the rate of calcium deposit is hugely faster than normal (we think about 10 times faster than normal but we cannot remember the figure quoted) and these new tunnels are already coated in hard calcium deposits and stalactites. It looks rather soft and slimy, like a sort of flow coat, and Nicky said that at that point she felt as if she were on the set of the film ‘Alien’, where the alien eggs incubate, rather than in a limestone cave.

The whole of the cave area was wet with water constantly churning through the water courses and dripping from the roof above us. We were told that occasionally, after major rain, the whole tunnel system floods. Whilst most of the running water was below or alongside us in streams, we also saw one vaulted cavern where a waterfall cascades down from a small hole high up in the rock into small green lake before the water rushes off down one of the underground streams.

The whole tour was fascinating and we were very glad that we had braved the bus ride to see it. Better still, arriving back out daylight we discovered that there was also quite a lot of the gully which we could walk around.

The floor of the gully has been cleared in places to allow visitors to wander around and admire the native flora and fauna. We saw bearded figs (after which the island is named), huge coconut palms (don’t stand underneath), banana plants and lots more.

Most of the plants were not yet flowering, where they were the bright splashes of colour lit up that area of the gully. It must be fabulous later in the year when all the plants are flowering.

Some not-so-native fauna: monkeys descended from those brought from Africa
 with the slaves who were destined for plantation work   

And we enjoyed watching the antics of a small troop of monkeys, not a native species but now very much at home on the island. Later the same day we visited Welchman’s Hall Gully, which is connected to Harrison’s Cave and this gully. In the guidebook we saw a comment to the effect that the botanists who maintain Welchman’s Hall Gully keep fighting a losing battle against the monkeys to grow and display to visitors the fruits of some of the gully plants. Most of the fruits are just too tasty and the monkeys always get in first and eat them all! No doubt it’s the same in this gully; certainly, the monkeys looked to be very well fed.

And so with Harrison’s Cave and its gully explored we headed off to visit Welchman’s Hall Gully, before braving another rally-driving bus ride back to BV.

Bridgetown, Barbados