Coves del Drach

Overview

The Coves del Drach are a show cave on the east coast of Mallorca, at Porto Cristo in the municipality of Manacor, and the visit is built around a ten-minute live classical concert played from boats on an underground lake. The walking route covers roughly 1,200 metres and reaches 25 metres below ground level, and the operator budgets about an hour for the whole thing, concert included.

Four linked chambers make up the system: the Black Cave, the White Cave, the Cave of Luis Salvador and the Cave of the French. Walking through, you won’t notice where one ends and the next starts. What you will notice is the lighting, which the Catalan engineer Carles Buïgas finished in 1935 after fifteen months of work, and which still runs a sequence called “Dawn on the Lake” once the music stops.

Lake Martel is what made the place famous and it is still the payoff of the visit. The lake runs 117 metres long and 30 metres wide, with a depth of between 4 and 12 metres, and the operator describes it as one of the biggest underground lakes in the world. You sit in an auditorium facing the water, the lights go down, and a quartet plays four pieces from boats. After that you cross the lake yourself, either by boat or on foot over a bridge, at no extra charge.

The cave holds between 17 °C and 21 °C all year, so nobody needs a coat, and the humidity sits around 90 to 95 per cent, which is what makes the floor slippery in places. Rain outside makes no difference to the visit, which is why the caves fill up on the island’s few bad-weather days.

The site sits on the Ctra Cuevas at Porto Cristo, about 15 minutes on foot from the town’s port, with a large free car park for cars, coaches, motorbikes and bikes. The cave entrance itself is a further 200 metres from the car park, which catches out people who arrive exactly on their ticket time. If you are already based in Palma, this is a cross-island trip rather than a morning stroll.

History

The rock came first. The limestone here formed in the Upper Miocene, between about 11 and 5.3 million years ago, when the Mediterranean was warmer and the seabed was accumulating coral debris and shells. Rainwater seeping through cracks dissolved the calcite and aragonite, holes turned into chambers, chambers filled with water, and the drip cycle began building the stalactites and stalagmites the route now runs past.

Written records start in 1338, when Roger de Rovenach, the island’s governor, sent a message to the mayor of Manacor that most historians read as the first mention of the caves. The name itself is later: “Drach”, Catalan for dragon, first turns up in print in 1632, in Dameto’s history of the Kingdom of Mallorca.

Alongside the paperwork ran the folklore, which is where the dragon and the buried treasure come from. Local stories put pirate loot in the caves under the guard of a dragon, or in the version with slightly more historical furniture, the Knights Templar. Nothing was ever found, which has not stopped Porto Cristo’s souvenir shops selling dragons to this day.

The first real survey came in 1880, when Friedrich Will, a German army officer and entomologist invited to Mallorca by Archduke Luis Salvador of Austria, drew the earliest known plan of the caves. Will mapped the White and Black caves; the two chambers beyond them were still unknown.

Vuillier was also a friend of Édouard-Alfred Martel, the Frenchman generally credited with founding modern speleology, and it was on Vuillier’s advice, under the patronage of Archduke Luis Salvador, that Martel arrived in September 1896. Working with his colleague Louis Armand, he found chambers nobody had recorded and, at the far end of them, the great underground lake that now carries his name. Martel drew a new schematic plan showing everything he had added.

The showmanship arrived in 1935, and it arrived all at once. Carles Buïgas, the Catalan engineer known as the Magician of Light, spent fifteen months designing the electric lighting system, including the “Dawn on the Lake” effect that closes the visit, and the live concert on Lake Martel has been performed since. Ninety-odd years on, the format is unchanged: a quartet, four pieces, ten minutes, then the lights come up like a sunrise.

Visiting

Tours run at fixed departure times rather than continuously, and the timetable changes twice a year. From 16 March to 31 October there are seven departures a day at 10:00, 11:00, 12:00, 14:00, 15:00, 16:00 and 17:00; from 1 November to 15 March it drops to four, at 10:30, 12:00, 14:00 and 15:30. The caves close on 25 December and 1 January. Note the gap in the middle of the day in both seasons: there is no 13:00 tour at any time of year.

Book at cuevasdeldrach.com or through the official app, up to 30 days ahead. Online tickets cost a euro less than the window price, you go straight to the cave entrance without queueing at the ticket office, and you don’t need to print anything. Bookings cannot be made by phone, and there are no exchanges or refunds; if you miss your slot you lose the ticket.

Allow more arrival time than you think. Park (free, and large enough for coaches), then walk the 200 metres from the car park to the cave entrance; the site asks you to be there fifteen minutes before your departure. Toilets are at the entrance and the exit only. There are none underground, and the visit runs about an hour.

The descent is by steps with a handrail, and from there the route is a paved one-way path of roughly 1,200 metres that keeps dropping until you are 25 metres below the surface. The first formation you meet is the one called the flag, and the site also picks out the Diana Baths, a set of turquoise pools, and a mass called Mount Nevado further along. You walk at the group’s pace throughout: going ahead, dropping behind, leaving the path and climbing the railings are all prohibited, as is touching the formations.

The path opens out at the auditorium facing Lake Martel, where you sit down and wait. The concert is four pieces of classical music played by a quartet of two violins, cello and harpsichord from boats on the water, and it lasts about ten minutes; one of the pieces is the Barcarolle from “The Tales of Hoffmann”. Photography and filming are banned outright during the concert, and you are asked to stay silent through it.

When the music finishes the lights come up in the “Dawn on the Lake” sequence, and then staff release the auditorium to cross the water. Both options, boat and footbridge, are included in the ticket, and neither costs extra. The boat queue is the slower of the two by some margin. The crossing is short either way, and the bridge gives you a better view of the boats than being in one does.

Accessibility is the one place where the site is blunt about its limits. The route in and out involves steps, and the caves are not wheelchair accessible; prams are impossible for the same reason, so babies travel in arms or in a carrier. The rest of the facilities are another matter: ramps reach the bar and the shop, the adapted toilets are in the main building next to the car park, and there are reserved parking spaces. The operator does not recommend the visit for anyone with a coronary condition or claustrophobia.

Tips

• Take the 10:00 departure or one of the last two of the day. The operator itself names the first morning tour and the 16:00 and 17:00 slots as the quietest, which is as close to an official crowd forecast as you will get.

• Buy on the website or the official app rather than at the window. It saves a euro a head, locks your departure time, and lets you walk straight past the ticket office to the cave entrance.

• Don’t turn up at your ticket time. Turn up fifteen minutes before it, because the entrance is a 200-metre walk beyond the car park and a missed slot is not refunded or rebooked.

• Wear flat, closed shoes with grip. Humidity in the caves runs to around 95 per cent and the paved sections get slippery; heels and bare feet are both out, the latter by regulation.

• Leave the jacket in the car. It stays between 17 °C and 21 °C down there in every season, which in January feels warm rather than cold.

• Skip the boat queue if you are short on time. The crossing by footbridge is included in exactly the same ticket, it starts moving sooner, and the visit ends at the same exit either way.

• Use the toilets before you go down. There are none inside the caves and the tour runs about an hour with no way to leave the route early.

• Don’t go looking for a discount. There are no resident, large-family or voucher reductions, and every ticket buys exactly the same tour; schools and travel agencies book by email instead.

• Save the caves for a wet day if the forecast gives you one. Rain has no effect on the visit, and Mallorca has little else that improves in bad weather.

• Eat before or after, not in between. Food and drink are banned inside the caves, but the bar terrace outside is open all year and there are picnic tables on the grounds if you have brought your own.