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Other entries in Waitomo Caves

Hakuna Matata

Hello. We're alive. Just.

Did possibly the scariest thing we've ever done today. And I like to think that we were very brave and grown up about it, apart from when Hannah panicked at the top of the abseil and Sophie refused to jump into the water in a rubber tube...

I should probably explain...

Basically, Waitomo consists of one road, a hostel, museum, angora rabbit shearing centre and a pub above ground. Underground, however, it's a lot more exciting. There's a massive network of limestone glowworm caves, which is absolutely incredible. Instead of just doing the easy thing and walking on a platform ooh-ing and ahh-ing at the glowworms, we opted to do the Black Abyss, high-adreneline method, which is a five hour slog, with at least 3 hours underground. We were supposed to start at 4pm, but we were delayed as a previous group required a rescue mission and someone had to be helicoptered out, which filled us with confidence... However, we were given free hot chocolate and cookies while we waited, so we were happy.

Finally, we were given the all-clear and got kitted out in our sexy outfits: bikinis, moth-bitten olive green fleeces, wet suits, soaking wet wetsuit socks, clunky waterproof booties, skin-tight waterproof tops, orange helmets (complete with trusty headtorch) and massive harnesses. We looked hot as.

Next we drove up a hill and were given a brief lesson in abseiling. It really was brief. We were taught how the equipment worked and then 'abseiled' down a really gentle slope for about 4 metres. They told us that the abseil into the caves would be a bit different - i.e. 35 metres  vertically down, into a very dark tunnel, through a very narrow gap. They also warned us both that we had a unique problem - we were too light for the equipment so would have to slacken the rope a lot in order to move anywhere. Hannah was quite excited by this, as she's never been too light for anything. We were both freaking out before the abseil, but it was amazing once we'd been pushed off the ledge. I was expecting to just go shooting down, but I kept stopping by accident and spinning around, which was quite funny. Must eat more pies. Sophie was a 'natural', incidentally.

After our abseil, it was really cool wandering through the cave, seeing little glow worms blinking in the ceiling. There were loads of really narrow gaps and we learnt that we're not claustrophic types of people, which was a relief. We then had to do a zip-wire in the dark. They moved us slowly along the wire for a few metres, then switched all the lamps off and released us so we went flying along in the pitch black. It was terrifying.

Then we had to jump off a ledge whilst sitting in a rubber doughnut into water that was only a few degrees above freezing. Everyone managed to jump off the ledge and land sitting in the rubber ring (even Sophie, who was making such a fuss that she had to be pushed off the edge) except for Hannah, who went flying down, let go of the ring and plummeted underwater really ungracefully, swearing a lot. It was COLD. The water was only about chest-high, so most of the time, we were wading through it, slipping and tripping occassionally as we couldn't see the bottom. There were loads of little tunnels to slide through, half-filled with water, which was quite scary when you couldn't see the end of the tunnel. There was also a bit of rock-climbing to be done, which was fairly interesting in tight wetsuits completely full of water with leg mobility not at its best. We slid head-first down a slide through a waterfall, which was pretty cool as we had no time to think about it beforehand. Oh, and we saw an eel, which was fairly groovy. We saw lots of things in fact, such as stalegmites and/or -tites, fossils, whalebones and a fossilised whalebone. And lots of glowworms.

The last part of the trip was the most challenging. We had to climb up two violent waterfalls to get back above ground. It was very scary, especially if you have stumpy legs like Hannah or are as flexible as an old age pensioner like Sophie, and can hardly reach from one ledge to another.

We emerged, three hours later, soaking and exhausted but buzzing with adreneline, ready for our hot showers, soup and bagels. Yum. Was such an incredible experience, if completely terrifying, and we're so glad that we did it. And so glad that it's over. Haha. We feel like proper explorers now.  :-)

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