Waitomo Caves: The Black Abyss

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Trip Start Apr 06, 2007 Previous
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  Waitomo, New Zealand
Thursday, April 19, 2007

 
4-19 Black Water Rafting...the Black Abyss






Andrea: Since everything in New Zealand closes at about 6pm, we decided to just crash last night in the camper. Thank God we got the upgraded camper with a bathroom!!! Anyways, we slept right outside the Black Water Rafting Co.'s building, so we could get there first thing for the "Black Abyss" Tour, a five hour adventure deep into the caves.






Jose: I am going to interject here...I woke up and having slept way to many hours was ready to do anything

a - we made it through the caves!

. Seeing on of the workers arrive for their day on the job I gave them about 5 min before I followed them into the reception area. They have a restaurant/café attached to the reception area and that is where I found the worker. She was extremely friendly, she told me how the night before she was mowing her lawn and fell upon her funnybone which made her passout, she also told me how she lost half her thumb(which she showed me in detail) from tying a horse up...and she also informed me about the different options we had for caving...the simplest being a tour of the caves with a tour director for and hour to the most difficult and craziest included abseiling, rock climbing and black water rafting(same as white water only underground), so guess which one we did!!! You guessed it, the crazy one. Andrea tried all morning to talk me out of it but finally came over to the dark side once she figured out I was going no matter what.






Andrea: I was a little nervous for this adventure...especially considering when we woke up it was about 45 degrees Fahrenheit, and the brochure lists the Black Abyss tour as "soaking!" Try putting on a semi-damp bathing suit at 8am in that weather and see how you feel

aa

! Anyways, after some hot cappuccino, we met up with our guides and four other scared, but excited tourists. Our first task was getting suited up in wetsuits - and literally, they were WET wetsuits, still damp from the last tour and cleaning I suppose. Talk about freezing!!! But once we had everything, wetsuit, wetsuit jacket, wetsuit booties, rubber boots, and helmet with headlight, you really couldn't feel the cold as much - only my hands and face were frozen!






After getting our harnesses on, we hopped in the van to head to the cave. First stop was practicing abseiling down a hill, which was how we were to get into the cave. The abseiling was pretty easy, but I imagined that doing it down a hill in the daylight in the beautiful New Zealand countryside was going to be slightly different that doing it into the depths of a dark, black cave.....






We then headed off to the cave, which looked like a platform to a big hole in the ground. Jose decided to go first - the guide hooked him up to the abseiling ropes, and a way he went, down into black nothingness.






Jose: I didn't volunteer, I was picked out because I was checking the ropes that had been assigned to me

aaa - Going Down Under....

. As I was going down I kept looking down, trying to find the light of the guide below me to see how much further I needed to go, so everytime I looked down not only did I scare myself half to death because it was really black both upward and downward but also I was getting tired. My left hand started to ache and then to shake, I looked down again telling myself no matter how far I needed to make it, it looked like it was at least 50m more, and THEN the guide jumped out and scared the living daylights out of me. He had his light off the whole time. He got me really good.






Andrea: After Jose, another group-member went, and since he apparently lived, I decided to go next. The guide hooked my harness up to the rope, and after I hung there for a second, I had to let go of the rope slowly to get down. At first, it was pretty cool - there was a huge opening in the cave, with lots of space. Then the cave started getting narrower and narrower...and darker. I knocked my helmet a few times on the sides of the cave, as it was a really narrow - barely enough room for one person to fit. Then the cave got wider and darker. I could hear Jose talking, but it seemed very far down. After about 5 minutes, the guide all of sudden appeared behind me and scared me half to death. Inside the cave was very dark and rocky, but as I sat down to wait for the rest of the group to come down, I noticed all the glowworms shining up above us. Very cool - they looked like bright green stars everywhere.






Once the rest of the group made it, we walked for a little bit deeper into the cave, until we came along a set of ripline cords

aaaa - Learning to Abseil

. At this time, the guide told us to turn all of our headlamps off! He hooked up the first person to the zipline, and then pushed them into the darkness. There was a huge banging noise (the other guide trying to scare us), but it looked pretty cool. So one by one, we ziplined into the darkness of the cave, There were tons of glowworms everywhere, but flying through the darkness was still pretty scary. At the bottom, they gave us a snack, and we all sat in a line like kindergartners eating our snack and tea, peering over a cliff, wondering what was below us.






We soon found out - the guides passed out rubber tubes, and showed us how to jump over the cliff into the water below. I was REALLY nervous for this one. I can jump off a 192 meter building with a harness on with absolutely no problem, but jumping over a cliff into a dark black cave with nothing but a tube makes me a little scared! But I did it, and the water went everywhere! It was freezing!!! After a few minutes though, the wetsuit started to do its job, and kept me decently warm. We began to paddle down the waterway inside the cave, which was lit with glowworms everywhere

aaaaa

. They explained to us that glowworms are actually glow-maggots, and it is really their crap that shines....but that definitely doesn't sound as interesting or as cool as glowworms!






Jose: The part that glows is a tiny piece of a huge maggot and the reason it glows is to attract insects that think it is a way out of the cave. They were beautiful none the less.


The guide then gave us a choice of either turning around or continueing to the end of the cave, we all elected to go to the end of the cave...the only reason she asked was that there was a chance of finding a huge eel that had been sighted there hours earlier. She instructed us that if anyone fell out of their tube they were on their own, because with the eel in the water she would not go in after them. Staying close to Andrea we continued. We ended up finding an eel but it was tiny...maybe about two feet long and 2 inches wide...the one they had seen earlier was about 6 ft long and 8 inches wide.






Andrea: We paddled all the way to the end of the cave, avoiding the rocks that were jutting out of every side along the way

b - before the caves....

. Before we headed back, we all hooked up together in a line - I was last - and turned off our headlamps. The glowworms were amazing! They lit up the whole cave with not a lot of light, but with a steady green glow. It was very cool!






Then we ditched the tubes, and started walking through the water in the other direction. It was kind of difficult to walk, because there were rocks jutting out in every direction. They called this the "drunken pass", because people just fall everywhere. Along the way we saw an eel in the water - the only other animal in the cave besides the glowworms...at least that we saw anyway! The guides then huddled us up and gave us some chocolate as another snack. They were trying to make sure we had enough energy in us to keep going - we were only halfway through our time in the caves. After some light aerobics in the water, we kept on going through the dark tunnels. Some rock climbing was involved - I decided I'll stick to rock climbing in the daylight and without water! It was super slippery!!! We made our way to some incredibly tight tunnels where you had to be completely crouched down to fit through - I still don't know how Jose made it through some of those!

bb

! After one extremely tight tunnel, we ended up at the base of a waterfall...where we were told we were going to climb up it. Climb up the waterfall?? It seemed a little crazy, but they guided us through pretty much every step. Only after we all made it up did they tell us that there were actually two waterfalls, named something like the twin falls of doom.






Jose: What she forgot to mention was that there were huge holes where people could easily fit through that if we fell we would be in a heap of trouble. The guide showed us each hole and how to avoid them yet they were very much still there. He also showed us the way up the hole in case we fell up the trouble was that the pinch(a small crevice where a body barely fits but needs to go through in order to continue)...as they call it...was underwater which means you would need to hold your breath and then crawl army style about 6 feet until you could breath again...I don't know about andrea but knowing my clumsy self, my heart skipped a beat.






Andrea: It sounds a lot scarier than it actually was - the rock climbing was a little tricky because of all the water, but there were a lot of good foot and hand holds going up the rocks

bbb - In the Caves....with our Chocolate snack

. The second waterfall was a lot longer of a climb, but once I made it through I saw daylight! It was so exciting to get out back into the light (and heat) of the sun. We then hiked back to the van (which felt so good to get warm!) and made our way back to the base, where HOT showers, hot tomato soup and bagels were awaiting us. Overall, the cave was something I will never forget! It was beautiful, scary, and definitely gave me a huge sense of accomplishment - wait until you see these pictures!






Jose: On our way out we decided to stop by a touristy spot to see some rabbits. Not any ordinary rabbits these are Angora Bunnies from Germany. The have to be sheared every 3 months or else they die of heat exhaustion. I got several pictures of both sheared and non sheared bunnies.






After that we headed for Wellington, or so we thought

bbbb - Jumping over the cliff...

. We made it more than half way but we found this incredible mountain and decided to take a million pictures of it. Afterward we ate dinner at a gorgeous modern rustic restaurant right on the water. The food was to die for. And the ambiance with the sun setting and the clear sliding glass doors was incredible. We took several pictures of the sunset before leaving. After dinner we drove about another hour but by then I was getting tired because of the amazing lamb I had eaten, so we decided we would find a scenic spot to camp the night. What really ended up happening is we followed 3 different streets to the same cows because there were several signs stating there was a scenic camp out location. After spending 20 min ending up at the same 3 cows that were by the way loose and by loose I mean there was no fence or rope or anything to hold them in place. We decided to continue on...we found about 10 min later a sign for a surf beach and that is where we stayed the night. We could hear the surf and the stars were amazing since there were no lights around to cover the stars. And so with that we will sign off until tomorrow.






Love


Jose and Andrea

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bbbbb - with our Warrior Cave paint in the caves	c	cc	ccc
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g - the organic Brewmaster & Jose...	gg	ggg	gggg

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