Gua Boni Ayu, Sukabumi, Java

I've only been to one cave in the Sukabumi area of West Java, Indonesia. That is Gua Boni Ayu (Buniayu). Ayu means beautiful in Sundanese. My visit was in 2002.

From Sukabumi we drove south towards Sagaranten and up and over a mountain range before reaching Gua Boni Ayu. This karst area is riddled with dolines and covered by pine and damar trees.

The Forest Dept. looks after the cave and runs it as a show cave. They even had about 7 sets of Petzl carbides.

Lots of steps down to the cave entrance, then steps down in the cave. We came to the streamway and followed it. It was very muddy. There were lots of straws and some nice gours and a few stal.

The streamway is quite small and you have to stoop in places. We stopped at a place and I was told that in 2000 an earthquake had caused a collapse. It's now a squeeze.

Cave has lots of insect bats, a few large crickets, small whip spiders.

We went back out and at the entrance followed a high level passage where there were bats and swiflets. We did a muddy route out to another entrance at high level. We were in the cave for about 75 mins.

After the trip we had a quick look at a shaft nearby.

© Liz Price
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