A black wet hole
Trip Start
Apr 24, 2007
1
32
68
Trip End
Jul 17, 2007
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Waitamo,
New Zealand
Friday, June 1, 2007
On arrival, the first priority was to sort out accomodation. Here, Sarah put her foot down, identified the place we were GOING TO stay as the only Hobbit motel in New Zealand (yes, it is as sad as it sounds!). Shane claims he protested this, but really he knew better and just accepted the enevitable.
So there is only one reason for being in Waitamo and we went and explored them. To do this you start in your swimming costume and add an ugly brown fleece, a wetsuit (inc. booties), a pair of shorts, gumboots and a helmet.
Before getting to the caves we stopped at a platform jetty over a river, collected a rubber ring and jumped backwards into the water. This was not part of the caving experience, it was merely preparation for the freezing cold water ahead and the 2 waterfalls that we were going to have to jump off of.
Then we got to the entrance of the caves.
What followed was a couple of hours of clambering though narrow caves carrying the rubber ring and guided only by the lights in our helmets, intersperced with periods of sitting on the rubber ring floating down rivers of freezing water.
It was cold, wet and very, very dark and Sarah hated every minute of it.
Turning off the helmet lights enabled us to see the thousands of glowworms inhabiting the roof of the various caves. It's very pretty (until you realise that what's glowing is their arses).
Finally, we had to switch off our heaadlights and navigate our own way out of the caves. Somehow, Sarah managed to end up snuggly in a dead end with no site of the exit back to the real world - otherwise known as a career in accounting.
Curiously, there are no pictures of the black water caving. See http://www.waitomo.com/cave-tubing.aspx for pictures and movie.
Hot showers then helped to defrost frozen extremities.
Then it was dinner and back to the Hobbit hole...
