Rap, Raft'n, Rock - Blogabond

Off to Waitomo for a caving adventure on the morning of the18th. I know I wan't planning on doing any of these tourist adventures, however, I've never been caving and this part of New Zealand is known for its amazing cave adventures so I counldn't resist.

Bethany, Laura and I piled back into the car for the next adventure in the caves. Laura booked a trip with 5 different abseils into a cave abseiling though waterfalls. Bethany and I booked a 5 hour tour with a variety of activities including an abseil.

The tour guide was a 24 year old Kiwi living in Hamilton. He had been guiding caves for the last month prior to working in restaurants in Australia. When we arrived at the changing area, we were instructed to put on thick long wetsuits, with leggings over the top, a wetsuit jacket and large white rubber boots, complete with a hard hat and waterproof light.

First we abseiled on a harness and ropes 27 meters into the cave. We landed in a river of freezing cave water. We entered one arm of the cave holding onto innertubes. The cave was completely dark. Even with our headlamps we could only see about a 3 feet in front of us. We started in ankle deep water that quickly turned thigh high, we were all of a sudden up to our armpits in cave water. The next part we followed our guide through the smallest cave opening. At first glance, it would appear that our hard hats wouldn't even fit through it. Apparently the appropriate way to cave is to go arms first, head, body, then push with your feet and pull with your arms. I'm not kidding when I say that me to this opening was like a worm to a worm hole. They were that tight.

On the other side of the worm hole, the cave opened up into a giant catherdral room. Glowworms in the ceiling lite up the entire cave like the Milky Way. We could see the other cavers silhouettes without our headlamps. It was incredible!

The rest of the caving experience included floating in tubes, jumping from ledges and more worm holes. On one particularily tight squeeze, my leggings and rubber boots came off.

At the end of our 5 hour tour we scaled back up the wall that we abseiled at the start and piled back nto the van or a hot shower and tomato soup back at the cave shop.

Pictures soon to come. :)

written by

Carissa on November 18, 2010 from Waitomo Caves, New Zealand

from the travel blog: World Tour Nov. 2010- ?

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