13 August 2010

Abseiling at Waitomo Caves

Thursday morning we bid farewell to Elise, Jeremy and the dogs and began our journey to Waitomo Caves. We took a rather leisurely pace, stopping for photo opps, lunch at the Fat Pigeon and an occasional shop. We found Adventure Cave Tours and waited for our caving expedition. A shuttle took me, Billy and Hector, a 19 year old student from England to the point where our adventure would begin. Our guide, Scott, gave us our gear. Let me pause here to mention just what a stressful moment this was for me. I have this thing about people germs and ABSOLUTELY DETEST wearing community clothing, hats, gloves, shoes, etc. For our caving trek we had to wear a jumpsuit, a hard hat with a light, a harness and rubber boots. It took some deep, calming breaths for me to be able to put on the garb, particularly the boots!!


Suited up, we took a short walk to the platform over the opening to the underworld. Peering down from above, we could not see the river below, though we could hear it. It was dark and misty and quite exciting. Scott showed us how we would be proceeding and it was about time to take the plunge, so to speak. Now it was Billy's turn for deep breathing. Eighteen years of marriage and I never knew he was afraid of heights. He was so funny! His nervousness brought about a side of him I’ve never seen. He was making goofy comments, interrupting Scott’s instructions, basically stalling. I finally told him to “just stop talking!” Quite the role reversal!!

The four of us slowly descended on our ropes, lowering ourselves down the 100 meters to the ground below. It was fantastic! At the bottom, the river was deafening. We detached ourselves from the ropes and began to hike through the gorge, frequently having to climb over rocks and boulders. There were different types of formation, not a lot unlike Mammoth Cave. Often we had to turn our headlamps on just to see where we were walking. At one point we stopped and Scott had us turn off our lights. We looked up at the ceiling of the cave to see what looked like the sky full of constellations. In fact, what we were seeing was larvae poop! Yep, a certain type of fly (guess I should look up the name because I don’t recall) fly into the cave and lay larvae on the ceiling. The larvae’s excrement glows to attract other insects which then become stuck in webs the larvae make. The larvae then eat the insects. They are in larvae form for 9 months. When they become flies, they mate, have baby larvae then become trapped in webs and get eaten by like a cousin or something. They are flies for only 3 days. Honestly, I’m not making this up!! The brochures called them glow worms so there was a slight letdown to find out that it was actually larvae poop!
Once we had our fill of larvae poop, we continued our trek through the cave. I had wondered briefly about how we would get back up out of the cave that we had abseiled down into. Well, that question was answered when we arrived at a 100 foot ladder, virtually straight up and down! Scott had gone up first to secure the rope and then I went. That climb up was 10 times hard and scarier to me than the 100 meter descent. Oh, the burn!!! My arms and lower back were on fire and panic set in about three quarters of the way up. Okay, so we were attached to our harness and rope, but we were not pulled up. And I did not want to find out just how strong our dear guide Scott was by letting go! Hector zipped up like it was nothing! He confessed he ran cross country. Billy and I were feeling our age panting and aching.

We had a little more hiking and climbing to do before emerging out of the cave and into the forest. Billy and I were exhausted but invigorated at the same time.

We shuttled back to our car, purchased every photo of our adventure then headed to Raglan where a hot tub and our motel room called our weary bones.

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