5 of us from the Kiwi Experience bus, 2 Germans, a Finish couple, and Moi. Oh, and our cool guides too.
Travel: KE bus Hot Water Beach to Waitomo Caves, 223km, Caves, 3km? Let's go with that
Total Distance: 2394km
5 hours of brilliant awesomeness!
Not that street level awesome. Not even that Britain Just Got Its First Non-dual Citizen In To Space awesome. No. That proper takes your break away and opens up new worlds to your personal life awesome. To everyone who told me to go for the full big 5 hour adventure, thank you. SO GOOD.
Waitomo, like North Yorkshire, is a region founded on limestone. This rock dissolves slowly due to water flow (although it's becoming faster as we get more acidic rain). Over time this wears holes in the rock, taking millions of years to form caves, tunnels, stalactites, stalagmites, st was, flow stone, cave coral, and waitomos. Waitomo is a Maori work roughly translated to mean hole in the earth where water goes into/comes from. They are the holes eroded between the surface and the tunnels beneath, normally by water flowing through a crack over thousands of years to make the crack larger.
Our two guides were cool. One was a young guy who'd been there for a while. The other was a younger lass who was missing one hand. If you don't know why this is important to me catch up on my blog posts from end of August to November, particularly the whinny one about life in a cast. She could handle here gear faster than most climbers I've ever seen. We had a good chat about living in NZ on the drive to the caves. My interest in her might also have been helped by her being beautiful, funny, interesting, out going, joyful, bright... you know, all the things that make you wonder if migrating back is really such a good idea. Anyway...
The Team
We were all fitted with wetsuits and climbing harnesses. I took my high tech thermals too, basically like Lycra with a shiny inside, because they've kept we toasty for canyoning in the past, and caves are generally not that warm (though generally steady all year round, so great in winter). We were given 2 carabiners and a 5 bar abseiling rig- I've been climbing for over a decade and I can't remember ever using a 5 bar before, interesting bit of kit that I won't nerd out by explaining. (Dear Mum, it's safe, don't worry.) Then off in the bus to training.
"Training"
There was a wee training session, using ropes outside to practice abseiling, ensuring we could slowly descend and stop properly. Then we were off on our own!
The waitomo we were to enter through was surrounded by green, tropical bush, and has a steel walkway built above it. As would soon become the theme of the day, I was pushed to the front by the group to go first. I looked down into the pitch black hole and slid off the walkway into the abyss.
Ready to go
The cave is an hourglass shape, narrowing such that I had to twist around to fit throughthe gap, before twisting back to get my feet on the wall. From here I could turn slightly to look down at the..at the...where's the bottom? How deep is this thing?
(That's not me)
I slid down into the darkness, before hitting the floor. Unclipping from the rope, I moved out of the way for the others to follow, using just enough light to find a seat before the German lads followed. With the lights out I could see the creatures this area is famous for.
Up above, attached across the whole roof, and in some places the walls, were the tiny green cloud of glowing jewels. Up there, high above us, one could see nothing but their little lights, as the rest of the team abseiled in.
Once gathered we had a chat about how the caves are formed, the formations in the cave, and some of the fossils found there. Limestone is formed from the reminents of crustacean shells building up on the floor bed. Occasionally some of the shells remain intact or skeletons are buried with them and have become fossilised. Later we would see more fossils including a whale rib.
From here we went to the rope swing.
Pick your spirit animal.
Think of the noise that animal makes.
Now be tied to a rope and be hurtled through a pitch black cavern making that noise.
Fun times.
The guy before me made a noise that sounded like an alcoholic seal. He said it was a dog. His dog needs seeing to.
I went with a fox- and given that the mating call of a fox is basically a scream mine was easy! Not to mention fun. Even if no one know what it was.
We regrouped on a high ledge, watching people who had been on the tour before us paddle past in the stream below. Hot chocolate and biscuits were passed around as we stared up at yet more glow worms.
Our ledge had a steel platform attached to the side of it, placed over a deeper section of the stream below. Can you guess what this was for? No, we didn't just jump in. We jumped in with our rubber ring -theoretically- landing in it. Some of us could pull off having our fat arse stuck in and getting it to stay. Others managed to get onto the water, only for the ring to Buck and toss them face first into the black lagoon. A lovely welcome to cave water.
We made our way up stream, splashing around, swimming, paddling, walking. The glow worms grew thicker above our heads and the roof grew closer.
Eventually the point at which most groups turn back was reached. Here we saw a juvenile Waitomo, water raining down from the ceiling through a crack above our heads, slowly opening at glacial speed.
We were the last group of the day and only half sized compared to the norm. This meant we'd spent half as long doing the first stages, and the same would be true of later. We had time to spare. And the cave didn't stop here. In the way back I would over hear one guide telli another that he hadn't been down here in a long time, so it wasn't BS when he told us this wasn't the norm. We were going further into the caves, and it was phenomenal.
Before we entered he slammed his ring down on the water three times, making an explosive noise. We then swam, quietly, as the cave shrank and the glow worms got closer. Yet the light became stronger. They became more numerous. I kept my headlamp off to be able to see them better. We began to see the silk threads hanging from below each form, occasionally with a dead insect trapped within. A worm might be seen feasting on its little victim, the starry sky above hoped to entrap more victims.
We eventually reached the sump, where the roof meets the water, the cave becomes narrow, and one needs scuba gear to cover the next 50m to find the next cavern. The worm silk hung down, not quite reaching our faces. We could see their long, clear bodies, like a thin, elongated caterpillar with a glowing bum. Lights were extinguished and we sat in the light. There were far more worms here than further down. Vastly more. The walls shone with bioluminescence. It was astounding.
Lights off, floating, we silently slid down stream, past millions of points of light. Though not before our guide had, again, hammered the water with his float. After this it was pure tranquility, floating in the darkness, staring up at an alien sky.
The reason for banging the water with his ring was to generate air flow. This vibrates the worm silk, making them believe there are insects very nearby, such that they increase the luminescence, giving a brighter light for a short time. Singularly the effect isn't, for human eyes, vast, but times it by a few million and it's very noticeable.
We kept going, past our young waitomo, past our high ledge, and further on to the dam built to keep the stream consistent throughout the caves, up stream and down. For this section, rather than a boring jump over the dam, there's a water slide! Which we went down head first, of course.
We still had some time to go, but now was a good place to stop.
"Does anyone need a wee?"
The group looked sheepishly at each other. We were in a cave in New Zealand, about to do more caving. Well, as much as I didn't want to do it with a vague idea of trying to tie myself in a knot, it's also another one to add to tick of the bucket list. Or urinal list. I've had the chance to pee in some amazing places before now, might as well add it.
"Yeh, it might help", the group looked relieved that someone had said yes, and we split off to find relief in the caves.
As the water level fell the numbers of glow worms decreased. They live off insects that pupate from the water before flying around the cave. Less water, less food.
The next section of the cave is the Drunken Stumble- an area with an uneven floor making people walk as though they've had a good night out in Glasgow. To this end we were each given a rock. The challenge was to not get it wet. (This is a very good idea for the point of view of health & safety, ensuring everyone watches their footing whilst having fun.) Our group could have been perfect. Yet at the end there was a ledge to climb up onto, where our first person promptly put his rock-hand down to steady the climb up, getting his rock wet in the process. Whereas I grew up in a house with squeaky floor boards and a family that wake up to anything- I've got my ninja walk well practiced.
Our next obstacle was a medium sized water fall.
Task 1: don't end up in the super deep hole at the top- our guide jumped in to show us and disappeared for enough time for me to think we'd lost him. He returned fighting for air. Yeh, I'll stay clear of that one.
2: Bomb off it! I can do a decent bomb, hurtling off and drenching the caves with my splashing, getting a jovial laugh from the guides.
3: Crawl under the waterfall! This wasn't easy, the ledge under was narrow and the water thundered inches above me. Honestly couldn't help but make a joyful WHOO! when half way through.
We carried on to a junction where it was time for hot orange squash and Whittaker's chocolate. Nomnomnom.
From here a nice, big, well worn tunnel branched off to the left. That wasn't our turning. We were going ahead. Through the tiny little hole through which the stream was escaping. I got down on all fours and began to crawl, moving through the water, along some tunnels, and straight into a waiting camera!
We met some eels whilst in the caves. The first we met was slightly tame. They'd fed Cecil in the past, giving him little bits of meat, and now he comes to splashing on the surface. He's been there a very long time. There are a few further along. Eels are territorial, so one will push out another, apparently often with replacements being a similar size, making it hard to know how long each eel really has been in its personal chamber-pool. They start off in life in the oceans around Tonga, coming to NZ where they swim up stream, occasionally getting into the caves. They aren't the evolved, albino varieties that some places have. Just normal, smart, vicious, cute, tasty, eels.
The eels we saw were about 2 feet long and about the thickness of my wrist. They have had bigger ones though. We came to another waterfall, this one flowing against us such that we had to step up onto it. Here someone had once put their hand on a large "log" only for it to swim off. An eel at least 6 inches in diameter resting after trying to go further up river. Probably 2 metres in length, maybe more. Pretty rare though.
We got a group photo at the waterfall.
"Left Right Left Left, and don't go down the big hole, OK?"
"Left Left Right Left, don't go down. OK."
"No. Left Right Left Left, No hole."
"Left Right Left Left, no extra caving, scream like a little girl if lost. OK."
I was first into the little labyrinth, crawling along. It was made easier by the slight ware visible on the rocks. Though I did have a moment of starring at the big hole. Where does that go? Then someone bumped into the back of me.
We had two large waterfalls to free climb. 3-4 metres each, with help from the guides to guide us (useful, eh?) up and over without being washed away. Yay, rock climbing! I miss regular climbing like I used to do at Uni.
Finally we crawled through a tunnel which had roots growing out of the bottom of the stalactites in the ceiling. Like little ice cream cones with a tuft sticking out of the bottom. This seemed odd until I realised how close we were to the finish. :(
The exit was a little hole in another forest. We had a group photo. It was getting dark. Past 9pm! We'd been down there a long time. Time for bed.
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