What to see inside Sterkfontein Caves

The guided walk underground

Nobody goes down alone. Every visit underground is with a guide, on the hour, in a group of up to 30. You wear a helmet, because the ceilings drop low in places and Wits warns about falling rocks. The way in and out runs down stairs and through narrow passages, and in a few spots you crouch to get through. It can be wet and slippery underfoot. One local visitor page counts 115 steps going down and 211 coming back up. Other accounts differ, but plan for a lot of stairs.

The rock around you

This is dolomite, laid down about 2.5 billion years ago on the floor of a shallow inland sea. Wits points out that it preserves stromatolites, the mounds left by some of the earliest photosynthesising life on Earth. The caves dissolved out of that rock much later. Stalactites and stalagmites grow from the calcium carbonate that water carries through it, and the temperature underground holds at about 20°C all year, so you can leave the coat in the car.

The lake

The tour passes an underground lake, with still, dark water reflecting the rock pillars above it. It is a reminder of how far the system runs below the walkways. Divers tried to measure the lake in 1984, its full depth is still not known, and diving is no longer allowed.

Where the fossils came from

Part of what makes this different from a show cave is that the scientific work is still going on. The current excavations began in 1966, and Wits calls this an active excavation site. The Silberberg Grotto, a large cavern in the system, is where the Little Foot skeleton lay embedded in rock. You also see fossils still set in the breccia, the hard cemented cave fill that holds them. Your guide decides how much of the story to tell at each stop, so ask.

Read next: The fossils of Sterkfontein: Mrs Ples, Little Foot and human origins

The fossil laboratory

Back above ground, the preparation laboratory is one of the newer parts of the site. A technical team, postgraduate students and researchers clean, sort, document and catalogue fossils here, and not only from Sterkfontein: material comes from sites across the Cradle of Humankind. Who is at the bench depends on the day, so ask your guide what is being worked on.

The exhibition and the museum

The temporary exhibition holds one of only two full casts of the Little Foot skeleton, plus finds from both Sterkfontein and Swartkrans, including the first complete leg of a Paranthropus. In the small museum, guides tell the story of the first discoveries. One thing to know before you go: the two famous originals are not on show here. Mrs Ples is held at the Ditsong National Museum of Natural History in Pretoria, and Little Foot is held by Wits in Johannesburg.

The excavation and the surface

Walkways lead out over the open excavation pit, where you can look down at the deposits that made the site famous. The Timeline Walk and the scenic trails run across the surrounding grassland. The museum, the laboratory and the Timeline Walk are all accessible by wheelchair, while the caves themselves are not. That makes this half a full visit for anyone in your group staying above ground.

What the 2022 flood changed

Heavy rain in December 2022 saturated the soil and washed material into the cave system, and the site closed in early 2023. It reopened on 15 April 2025. Wits now runs all visitor operations. On 6 November 2026 the caves were open, with tours on sale. If you read an older post saying the caves are closed, it is out of date, but it costs little to check on the caves' own website before you travel.