Huagapo Cave

Huagapo opens as an arch about thirty metres high and twenty wide in a limestone hillside near Palcamayo, with a river flowing out of it, and the name in Quechua is usually rendered as the cave that cries. The first few hundred metres are walkable with a guide and a lamp - a large gallery with formations, breakdown blocks and the stream alongside - and that is what ordinary visitors see. Beyond that it becomes a serious caving system: successive Peruvian, Polish and French expeditions have pushed it past two and a half kilometres of surveyed passage with sumps and vertical pitches, making it among the deepest known caves in South America, and its full extent is still not established. The deeper sections require wetsuits, ropes and experience, arranged in advance. Fossils and pre-Hispanic material have been reported near the entrance zone.

What you actually see

• The entrance - an arch about thirty metres high with a river running out.
• The first galleries - several hundred metres walkable with a guide and lamp.
• The deep system - surveyed past two and a half kilometres, still not fully explored.
• The Quechua name - usually translated as the cave that cries.

When to go

May to September; the cave floods in the rains and water levels close sections. Two to three hours for the tourist section. Deeper caving must be arranged in advance with proper equipment.

Honest expectations

Only a small part of the cave is open to ordinary visitors - the rest needs wetsuits, ropes and experience. Wet, cold, muddy and dark; footing is poor. Lighting is limited to what guides carry. Flooding closes it without warning.

Nearby

Palcamayo is the village below; Tarma and the Junín highlands are south.