SPELUNKERS’ SPECIAL

Flowstones, stalactites, chandeliers, stalagmites, and soda straws are all terms for the formations you’ll see in one of the most stunning show caves in Texas. Natural Bridge Caverns, located between San Antonio and New Braunfels, offers a half-mile of surprising sites created one hundred and eighty feet underground by time, rock, and water. The extensive Caverns, discovered and explored in the 1960s by four cave enthusiasts (and college students at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio), is marked by a sixty-foot, natural limestone bridge near its entrance. Before accommodating a walk-in pathway for visitors, the cave entrance was a far narrower passage, but not near as limiting as the crawl spaces negotiated by the four spelunkers who spent hours underground on four different occasions before finding the large and spectacular rooms visitors see today. Take the Discovery Tour, the Caverns’ original tour of the first half-mile of the cave network where enormous and elaborate natural stonework continues to grow in the slowly seeping water. Then join the Hidden Passages Tour and see some of the cavern network’s most unusual and delicate formations. Sign up for the Lantern Tour and see the cavern by the light of your cave lantern just like the discoverers saw it. Or, if you’re ready for a little spelunking adventure, try the Hidden Passages Adventure Tour. You’ll be outfitted with all the necessary caving gear including a rope harness, helmet and helmet light then lowered down a 160-foot shaft for a true deep cave experience.