Travel Chronicles - Engelbrecht Cave

Hello everyone and welcome back to Tiro Finale. Taking a break from our usual hobby related content, I have for you today a little chronicle of my recent travels and adventures. Located just a short distance from my new place was the Engelbrecht Cave. On one of my days off, I decided to pay a visit to the cave. After all, I have not had much experiences with caves and would certainly love to get the opportunity to practice some cave photography.

Originally a sinkhole, the Engelbrecht Cave was not known to be a cave system until many years later. Initially not thought to be of much worth and even at one point used as a dumping grown, it was not until the recent few decades where the discovery of the pristine limestone caves beneath it were made.

These days, the Engelbrecht Cave is a carefully curated limestone cave open to visitors and cave divers. Because of the sensitive nature of the cave's geology, visitors are only allowed to go down into the caves on guided tours. Nevertheless, it is certainly worth the time as the guides are very knowledgeable in regards to the cave's history and ecology.

For the most part, the caves are actually pitch black without any source of natural light outside of the openings which connect to the sinkholes above. Artificial lighting in the form of lamps help to illuminate the well preserved limestone walls. Photography did prove to be a bit of a challenge especially without the use of a flash.

With two sub-caves connected to the main sinkhole, these are the only accessible paths for visitors on foot. The rest of the cave system can only be navigated by cave divers. I am told that the diving portion for these caves are fairly complex and have yet to be fully mapped out owing to the difficulty of the cavernous systems.

Despite the warm weather outside, the cave itself was cool and surprisingly humid. The sealed off nature of these caves meant that they remained fairly constant in temperature throughout the whole year.

Despite the stable climate, there are no other lifeforms present in these caves except for one known species dwelling in the water. There just is not enough resources to support any lifeforms down in the depths of the cave.

Despite the rough terrain of the caves, the entire walking path has been carefully laid out with lights to guide the way.

All in all, the entire guided tour of the cave took roughly 45 minutes with more than enough time allocated to take photos. While this cave was certainly smaller than expected, it did serve as a great entry point for me to dip my feet into cave photography.

One cave down, I was now looking forward to visiting more caves to gain even more experience with cave photography. I have not gone into the finer details of my camera settings. But, I would certainly be more than happy to go in depth about it in the future articles. With my surrounding area being known for various sinkholes and caves, it was certainly a good chance for me to learn more about cave photography. Well, that is all for now. We will be back to our regularly scheduled content on Tiro Finale soon enough. Until the next time, thank you so much for reading and have yourself a wonderful day ahead!