The Not-So-Cavey Caves

A couple of days ago, Jack and I went on an adventure through The Baths. This is one of the most famous places in the British Virgin Islands. It is called The Caves on signs on the beach. In guide books, it is called a granite boulder pile. I call it the Baths. It is called these names for good reasons. It is actually a pile of house sized boulders and every other smaller sized rock. It is on the sea shore so water splashes in on one side. The day before, we had walked through The Caves on the trail. We had seen all sorts of tunnels and pools that we had wanted to explore. There was no way we could have brought Mama and Daddy through because they would have gotten stuck a thousand times. I picked out my three favorite off-trail explorations to write about.

Jack on one of the smaller boulders in The Caves

This is me in one of the pools

One of the best was the main bath. It had a ten-foot beach as well as a twenty five square foot pool. At first glance it was nothing more than a small collection of water. If you swam to the back you could find an ankle deep passageway that led to another large pool. I had to walk sideways in order to fit through a thin passageway. Unfortunately, it led to a dead end. Jack and I splashed around in the pool for a few minutes before looking for a new adventure.

Jack took this selfie while underwater in one of the pools

The second best place was a thirty foot long snake tunnel under the trail. I call it a snake tunnel because there were snakes. Not real snakes but anyone passing through that tunnel had to squirm on his or her belly. For about a foot I had to roll onto my side to allow passage. I also thought I was stuck twice. The awesome thing was we looked like we had just escaped the sand-man after we exited. We were wet from splashing around in the baths so we were covered in sand after squirming around on it. It took awhile to wiggle through so we were used to the dim light. When we squiggled out we popped out in broad daylight. We were squinting and dizzy so we gave the impression that we had woken up thirty seconds before.

Jack coming out of the Snake Tunnel

Now for my favorite. In this mini exploration we had to swim in five feet of water. The water stayed deep as we squeezed through two giant boulders. After squeezing through, the water was so sandy that I couldn’t see my swim shirt. I swam forward into the even cloudier water when BANG OUCH. I slammed my knee against a steep up rise of the bottom. I lifted myself out of the water, glad to have unlimited head room. There was an inch of water continuing ahead of me. I stood up and sloshed along after Jack who passed me after I'd stood up. Ahead of us a corner hid the secrets of the rest of the tunnel. Jack rounded the corner and burst out laughing. I hurried around the corner to see nothing, just a tiny passage in two or three inches of water. I bent down only to see the bottom of Jack's shoes wiggling around. I bent down and began slide through the water after him. After about ten inches I found that I had to hold my head out of the water to breathe but not too high or I'd bonk it. It took me one minute to cover ten feet of ground. Jack took ten seconds. There was a tiny beach with the head room of one foot. Once we were both on the beach, I asked Jack how he had moved so quickly. He said he lay on his back with his hands in front of him. I was about to tell him how surprised I was when he scrambled on. There was a wonderful little cave that we called rum bottle cave. I came up with this name because we imagined we were pirates and the boulder pile had our treasure and rum stores. On the way out of this cave we ran into two teenage girls who I had no idea how they had gotten in since I could barely fit. Eventually, we figured out how to pass each other in such a small space. 

As you can probably tell from the pictures, we had a blast. I am hoping that we will be able to go back to The Baths when our friends David and Gina are visiting. – Porter