Hatchet Bay Cave in Alice Town, The Bahamas

Most people visiting Eleuthera never know this cave exists, which seems like a real shame. Hidden off Queen's Highway near the Hatchet Bay silos, it's the largest cave system on the island and one of the more genuinely weird and wonderful things you can do in the Bahamas. A descent down a set of rough stairs puts you in the first chamber, where natural light still filters in and a few stalactites and stalagmites give you a preview of what's ahead. Keep going and things get considerably more dramatic. The cave runs about a mile underground across three levels, with formations that locals and visitors have given names like "Cathedral Hall," "The Wizard's Hat," "Wedding Cake," and "Frozen Waterfall." A thin guide string runs along the floor to keep you on track. The cave was described in an 1874 issue of Harper's Monthly as "a cave extending 1,100 feet underground enriched by stalactites of a brilliant brown hue," which is still pretty accurate. At one point you'll need to descend a ladder to reach the second level, where the real formations are. The cave is also home to colonies of leaf-nosed bats, which mostly ignore visitors but will remind you they are there if you make enough noise. And then there's the graffiti. Some of it is genuinely fascinating: signatures carved with carbide lamps dating back to the 1870s, left by people who made their way in here before electricity or automobiles existed on the island. The more recent spray-painted stuff is considerably less charming, but it thins out the deeper in you go. The Lucayan Arawak people, who inhabited the Bahamas before European contact, believed caves were gateways to the afterlife. Archaeological evidence suggests they used Hatchet Bay Cave for burial purposes, which adds a certain mood to the whole experience. The cave is unmanaged, free, and about as far from a tourist attraction as you can get while still being a place people actually visit. It's worth every minute.