Just over a half hour west of Santo Domingo, in the town of San Cristóbal, is another landmark cave especially marvelous for spelunking. The Cuevas del Pomier (aka Cuevas del Borbón) is home to the Caribbean's best display of prehistoric art (pictured here), consisting of 55 especially beautiful caverns with lakes and more than 4,000 paintings and petroglyphs discovered in the mid-19th century - some more than 2,000 years old.
And some 90 minutes east of the capital, right on the highway near the city of La Romana and Nueva Romana Beach, the Cueva de las Maravillas ("Cave of Wonders") also boasts quite a bit of artwork (and of some of the country's best quality) of the Pre-Columbian Taíno people, 500 to 800 years old. There's a 240-metre (787-ft) route down here which takes you past many of the 500 or so paintings of human figures along with myriad animals including iguanas, snakes, owls, and bats.
Read more in our post Notes from the Underground: The Intriguing Caves of the Dominican Republic.
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