Gruta da Lapa Doce

A cave in Iraquara, Bahia, with high-ceilinged chambers and dense speleothem formations. Walking routes from 700 m to 3 km, light to moderate effort.

Lapa Doce is a cave of wide chambers, and the first thing visitors notice inside is how high the ceiling rises. Speleothems are densely concentrated here, and many of those formations have picked up nicknames because they resemble animals and scenes the imagination fills in.

It is the second largest surveyed cave in Brazil, with 42 km of passages, and it has appeared as a setting in films, news features and television novelas.

The visit is made on foot and there is more than one route, so you can choose according to your energy and the time you have. One covers 2.5 km and takes around 1h30, rated as light effort. Another, 3 km long, takes about 2 hours and is also light. A shorter option runs 700 m in roughly 50 minutes and is rated light to moderate.

The cave lies in the municipality of Iraquara, in the Irecê microregion and the Seabra immediate region. By car it is 11 km from Iraquara, 31 km from Palmeiras, 68 km from Lençóis, 153 km from Andaraí and 187 km from Mucugê. The Vivai catalogue also lists Gruta da Torrinha, the Pratinha river and cave, and Gruta da Fumaça in the same municipality, which makes it easy to combine more than one visit in the same trip.

There is an active experience in the Vivai catalogue that includes Gruta da Lapa Doce.