Curacao Pictures - Cave with indian drawings at Ronde Klip

Details: 01 November 2015

Ronde Klip Grot 20151029 084 small On Thursday, October 29, 2015 the sleuths went looking for a cave with indian drawings in the area of Ronde Klip in the cliff between the middle and lower limestone terrace on the North shore. The cave is described in the book "The prehistoric rock drawings of Bonaire and Curaçao" from P. Wagenaar Hummelinck. The description contains also a small drawing where the cave is located. Fred created based on this map and Google Earth a waypoint of the most probable location of the cave. I checked his location with the Werbata map and came up with a slightly different location.

We got permission from Roy Rusch to park our cars inside the Recreation and Camping center "Ronde Klip" opposite the plantation house Ronde Klip. From there we walked over the road to Playa Kanoa till we found a good location to leave the road and walk in the direction of the upper terrace. There we visited one of the two ruins of small storage buildings for explosives (probably dynamite); both ruins are present on the Werbata map so these buildings are from the 19th century. The roof is gone but the walls are in good condition.

We continued in the direction of the cave guided by our GPS. The terrain was rather open with only occasionally denser patches of vegetation that we could easily avoid by walking around them. So an easy hike. The underground consisted of reddish limestone sand and bare limestone rock, not the best ground to walk on. You can easily make a misstep and fall. But we made good progress.
When we arrived at the edge of the upper terrace we paused before descending to the middle terrace. Also at the middle terrace the hike was rather easy. When we came in the vicinity of the waypoint that Fred had derived from the map we soon found the back entrance, a collapsed part of the roof, of the cave. Allen and I entered the cave from that side while the others searched for the front entrance. We met inside the cave close to the entrance. Fred's waypoint was only a few meters off, so his derived position was far more accurate than mine.

It is a beautiful cave with a high ceiling, so you can stand everywhere. There is sufficient light in the cave because of a number of openings in the roof and the collapsed part at the end of the cave. The roof and walls on both sides in the first part of the cave are full with drawings. Some very clear others a bit more difficult to see. I have never seen so many drawings in such a small area. Certainly a very nice historic cave.
Most of the drawings are published in the forementioned book either as a drawing or as a grayscale picture. The drawings are actually reddish-brown. The pictures beneath this article give a good impression of the drawings present in this cave even though by far not all drawings are photographed. The contrast is enhanced to better show the drawing.
There are also bats in the cave especially in the back part and the side-branches of the cave.

After a long while in the cave we decided to go back. We stayed on the middle terrace till we reached the cliff at the Western side. There we descended and followed the dirt road back to where our cars were parked. A unusually short but very worthwhile hike.