ruth and ed in nz

23rd December 2007
Have you ever done something on a whim and then wondered why you did it? My thoughts exactly on seeing the faces of the morning group who had just finished their Black Abyss trip down into the Waitomo Caves – knackered, horrified and sort of bent double. Oh yes, and absolutely drenched!
Anyway, off we went for our briefing with the comedy duo guides. They didn’t tell us much (probably best) and kitted us up in wetsuits and booties (still damp and cold of course), white gum boots (my feet were too small for the normal short boots so I got a full welly boot), climbing gear (again, just put it on and don’t ask why), and a helmet with a head lamp. Then we piled into the minibus and drown down a little unsealed road to the cave entrance.
First we had a quick lesson in abseiling which involved walking down a slope holding on to a rope to practice breaking. Then we walked over to the entrance which was a big hole in the ground. When I say big, I mean a 40 metre deep hole about as wide as a person so it was quite a squeeze, very dark, wet and slippery. Down the bottom the cave opened up in to a big room where there was a few clusters of glowworms on the ceiling.
We walked around the corner and the cave got bigger – it just went on and on from big rooms, to narrow corridors, to rivers. We walked, crawled, swam, and waded through very chilly water. We walked along one particularly narrow corridor and then I heard Ed scream like I’ve never heard him scream before. He had just done a ‘Flying Fox’ (aka zip wire) in to the Black Abyss – a big black space of nothingness. He says that he was told to scream like that to scare the rest of us – hmmmmm…. It worked though – jumping from a little ledge in to a big black hole is pretty scary!
We stopped for tea/coffee and a yummy cave cookie – things were looking up – then we were handed a big black rubber inner tube and told to jump down off the ledge in to the black water below. ‘Just keep your legs up and you’ll be fine’ the guide said as we jumped in to the ice cold water below. From there we merrily floated along the water through more of the cave and then we joined up in a line and the guide pulled us along while we laid back and watched all the glowworms on the cave ceiling above us.
We stopped again to warm up with some warm orange squash – some to drink and a little down the back of the wetsuit for extra heat. The exit from the cave was, of course, another adventure. We had to climb back out of the cave through a load of waterfalls. The guides shouted at us where to put our feets and sure enough – even with a wetsuit and a pair of wellies on – we were able to climb up and out in to daylight.
Back to base for a hot (ish) shower, soup and a bagel and a slide show of how silly we looked in our outfits. Awesome day!!
p.s. we bought the CD of the photos so we’ll upload them somewhere when we can…

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Friday, January 12th, 2007 at 8:02 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.