showcaves.com is a website with information about numerous tourist underground sites. It seemed weird to us, to make a FAQ for this complex site, since we expected, there would be a big variety in the questions asked. But reality is different: many visitors make similar misapprehensions which results in a constant flow of similar enquiries.
People who found one of our pages with a search engine think the page is the whole site. They assume it to be the page of somebody related to the cave or mine, the owner or administrator. So they erroneously ask us questions, they should ask the respective site administrator.
So now, receiving this mail, which is not intended for us, we have two possibilities: we ignore the questions, (which may be annoying for the enquirer, who gets no response) or we tell the enquirer that we are not the right place and where he should go instead. Until now, we exercised possibility two. Increasing traffic made this a Sisyphean work and only one in a thousand people we helped was polite enough to reply a simple thank you. Numerous insults made it annoying too.
So please understand, that showcaves.com will not answer any inquiry of this kind. This FAQ explains why and how to get information on your own.
Unfortunately there are many inquiries about things, we already described in the respective page. Spock of Star Treck, being absolutely logical, would suppose the questioner being either illiterate or lazy. The logical conclusion is: if the person is illiterate, he will not be able to read my answer. If he is lazy, he will be too lazy to read my answer. In both cases it is useless to write an answer. And who am I to question Spocks analysis?
If our pages are not detailed enough, there are several things YOU can do:
After you found more info, or visited the cave, please send the info to us! There is an explanation, how to submit info. We can not visit all caves on the world ourselves, so this will help improve this service.
showcaves.com is a website about underground tourist destinations all over the world. We do not offer any kind of booking service. Asking us to book a tour is like asking Lonely Planet or Frommer's.
Please contact the administration directly!
The address is given in the address field of the useful information section. If it is not there, we do not know it, and any further email request is futile!
No, I will not send anything.
Maybe you are under the same misapprehension as described in FAQ 2. This is a website about numerous show caves and mines, and we are not the ones to send you anything. We will definitely never send anything by snail mail or call you back at the telephone. And we will not send anything by e-mail. If we get new info or images, we will update the respective page or create a new one.
We are really sorry for that, and we will update our page as soon as possible. But:
This kind of information is always welcome, and we will update the respective pages asap. Unfortunately many of those messages, though made with the best intentions, are absolutely worthless. That is rather annoying and a waste of time for both of us.
All caves on earth are unique and extremely fragile wonders of nature, home to extremely rare and delicate life. They needed geological periods of time to form, and are destroyed in seconds. Most caves are protected by the law of the respective country, the others should be.
Do you really think we will give any information to somebody we do not know on the web?
This site is independent of the commercial owners of caves and mines. So the content is not a commercial or advertisement, but an objective description of the situation. We are doing our best to keep them as neutral as possible. But of course, the descriptions represents the personal opinion of the author to a certain degree. The right to write ones opinion is protected by laws of free speech in all free countries of the world.
So if something is wrong, tell us how it really is, explain it to us, and we will change it. But if you think, our description is not enthusiastic enough, or feel snubbed, please send your comment to .
That is our fault! We are working on it, but it is so much work, and it is impossible to have it all done at once! We are very sorry, but it will take some time to complete them one after another.
A few years ago we started to transfer all maps to dynamic Google Maps, which was a lot of work. Unfortunately GDPR happened, and we decided to refrain from any foreign content with cookies and stuff. Our maps are static, and we do not log any of your actions. If this is not dynamic enough, we recommend to download our kmz file, and you have all the locations in Google Earth for browsing.
No, we will not do your homework for you!
Our pages contain many explanations about caves, speleothems and much more. Then there are links to other resources, including information for teachers and pages dedicated to the American school projects. So please help yourself!
But if your question is more specific, and we think there might be other people interested in this, we will write a new page about this topic or improve an existing page. Of course, we will send you the link.
Mails which are not related to the topic of this site (you remember, caves and mines) will be considered spam and ignored. We are sorry for that, but we are not able to spend so much time for unrelated enquiries.
No!
Thank you very much for any informative link you provide us. If your page contains cave related information we will link it at an appropriate point of the site. It is not necessary, that you link back to our site. But we will not link to any other page, just because that page links to showcaves.com.
The reason is very simple: random links and link exchanges increase the "lost in cyberspace" phenomenon. A link is only useful, if the user is led to a page about a topic he is interested in. We know many page owners try to increase their Google ranking by placing links to their own site on other websites. We think the Google technology works best when people stop messing with it.
Pardon? We only speak Schwäbisch, German and English. But if you are able to read our English pages, you should also be able to ask your question in English.
To be honest, it is pretty impolite of you, not to do so the first time. It is always wise to contact people on the web in the language their pages are written in. We would answer anyway, but that is impossible if we do not understand the question. Try again!