Bushman's Hole Cave

About Bushman's Hole Cave

Bushman's Hole (locally known in Afrikaans as Boesmansgat) is a world-famous, deeply submerged freshwater cave and sinkhole located in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. Situated on the Mount Carmel Farm near the town of Danielskuil, it is widely recognized as one of the deepest freshwater caves on Earth, plunging to an astonishing maximum depth of 283 metres (928 feet). The Surface Pond: At the surface, the site appears as an unassuming, murky green pond roughly 100 metres in diameter, often covered in a layer of duckweed. To reach it, divers must climb down a steep, exposed rock face. The Main Chamber: Deceptively narrow at the top, the cave forms a bottleneck until about 60 metres down. From there, it opens up into a massive, pitch-black main chamber with crystal-clear visibility that drops vertically into a silty, muddy floor. High-Altitude Challenge: The cave sits at an elevation of roughly 1,550 metres (5,085 feet) above sea level. Diving at this altitude vastly complicates decompression calculations. For example, hitting the bottom requires a decompression schedule equivalent to diving nearly 340 metres at sea level, forcing divers to spend up to 12 hours ascending safely. While only a few elite technical divers in the world are qualified to explore the cave's deep zone, the site is open to tourists and sightseers visiting the Northern Cape.