When we hear the word Labuan Bajo, clear turquoise water, the beauty of pink beaches, and a cluster of islands and islets will come to mind. However, how about the cave? Have you ever heard about the famous Mirror Stone Cave in Labuan Bajo? The area of Mirror Stone Cave is 19 hectares. In this Mirror Stone Cave travel guide, we will help you to make the best plan to enjoy your trip to the majestic cave.
Location and How to Get There
The cave is located in the center of Labuan Bajo, West Manggarai. The cave is easily accessible by public transportation that will take you directly from Komodo Labuan Bajo Airport to the Mirror Stone Cave. It takes only around 15 minutes.
Entrance Fee
To embark on your adventure in the Mirror Stone Cave, you’ll be charged an entrance fee of IDR 20,000 (for domestic tourists) to Rp 50,000 (for foreign tourists). Usually, a tour guide will come with the group and explain the history and some ‘easter eggs’ of the cave. The tour guide is not for free; you need to pay IDR 20,000 to get the extra service.
When to Visit
The best time to visit the cave is around 9 am to 12 pm. That’s the perfect time to see the bright reflection from the sun inside the cave, a natural phenomenon that makes the cave is known as the Mirror Stone Cave.
What to Do
When you arrive at the site, you will find a small gate made of wood written ‘Welcome to Stone Mirror’. The gate is the entrance sign into the Mirror Stone Cave. About 250 meters from the gate—10 minutes by foot, you’re starting to see the entrance to the cave.
On the right and left side of the 250-meter path are bamboo trees where several long-tailed monkeys and wild boars are seen roaming around. No worries, they won’t do any harm to the tourists.
Rumor says that the cave used to be lying on the ocean floor, but an earthquake elevated the ground, so the cave rises to the surface of the earth. This rumor is proven to be confirmed by an archaeologist who was also a pastor named Theodore Verhoven, who found some fossils as evidence. The evidence is the coral stone which can be found on some parts of the wall. The evidence shows that the cave used to be located under the sea.
Before entering the cave, you’ll be given a helmet to protect your head from the stalactites and stalagmites while exploring the cave. For safety, the number of participants in a tour is limited to 10 people and 30 minutes for each tour.
The guide also asks you to turn on the flashlight of your phone to light up the cave. Why don’t we light up the cave with lamps? The heat generated by lamps might affect and even change the temperature of the rocks around the area, which isn’t a good thing if we want to preserve the cave as natural as possible.
While entering the passage of the cave, the tour guide will instruct you to duck and bend down to avoid hitting the stalactites with your head. If you stand up straight, you might hit some—that’s what the helmet for! Be careful during the cave exploration, or you’ll return home with a bump as a souvenir.
After crawling down the tunnel of the cave, you finally arrive at a large room. What makes it unique is a turtle fossil in the ceiling of the cave. Once you go deeper into the cave, you’ll find other fossils, such as fossils of coral reefs.
However, Mirror Stone Cave doesn’t get the name from the turtle and coral reef fossils. It’s because if you crawl down another tunnel, you’ll end up in a wider tunnel where the sunlight comes through the gap between the rocks in the ceiling directly to the wall. The sunlight lights up the whole room that you don’t even need any lamp or flashlight because of the bright reflection of the sun. It reflects light because the wall contains a high amount of salt.
That magnificent experience is not complete without taking pictures of the cave! You have your phone for the flashlight, and now it’s time to use it to perpetuate nature’s most majestic scene. No need to turn on the flash because it’s shining bright already.
One thing that’s worth trying inside the cave is screaming. Why? Because you’ll find that, unlike other caves where our voice will echo, Mirror Stone Cave doesn’t produce echo because it’s made of coral reef. The characteristic of coral reefs is it reflects light but not sound due to its cavities.
Make sure that you have this Mirror Stone Cave tour guide to travel without hassle. Happy traveling!
