Caving in the King Country

Last Tuesday, I did something new. And I might just need to have another go at it because it was amazing. Good thing I’m going to a certain school next year, because it may just be pretty easy for me to try my hand at caving.

Yes. I said it.

Caving.

Have I gone crazy? Nope. At least, I don’t think so.

But why, suddenly, do I like the sound of crawling, climbing, squeezing through caves?

Well, I went caving last Tuesday and it was pretty great.

Okay, okay, maybe it wasn’t actual caving, but it was pretty intense.

Getting ready to abseil into a 100+ ft crack in the ground

In the North Island of New Zealand, there is a region called Waikato. Tucked away in this region are a lot of lime stone caves. Many of these caves happen to be filled with a beautiful little creature known as the glowworm. As their name suggests, these babies glow, dotting the caves with constellation-like light. It really is a sight to see.

And see it I did.

As you might be able to imagine, these caves are quite the curiosity. And a lot of people (yes, even Kiwis, too) enjoy visiting them. But these days, the options of going through the caves are slightly more varied than a simple tour of the easier to reach bits. And since New Zealand has a reputation for being a bit adventurous, you can probably guess the nature of these other options.

In my case, the other option included rappelling (or abseiling for those of you who prefer that term) for 35 meters down through a crack in the ground; zip lining through a massive cavern in near dark, save the light of the glowworms; jumping, climbing, and crawling over, under, and through waterfalls and muddy tunnels; and yes, floating peacefully in an icy underground river, staring upwards at the glowworms.

Source

This adventure lasted a little over three hours. And three great, but exhausting hours they were. Towards the end, despite the full wetsuit I was wearing, I was chilled through—wading through chilly mountain streams in the dark can do that. And I was getting a little tired (despite the fact that I had been fed twice in the caves—hot chocolate, home made granola bars, chocolate, and juice helped give me a bit more energy), only to have the two guides of my tour turn to the rest of the group and say, “Okay, now you’re going to climb up a waterfall. It get’s pretty loud, so just watch us and we’ll point to where you should go. Got it?”

I was just a little intimidated by the image of trying to climb up a waterfall. A little one yes, but still, there would be water falling on me. While I don’t have a problem with climbing things, and I love zip lines and ropes courses, I’ve always sort-of-maybe hated rock climbing. There’s just something that strikes me as very claustrophobic about clinging to a wall, scrabbling for handholds and not really being able to lean back, so I wasn’t to fond of the idea of climbing up a cave through a water fall.

But it wasn’t too bad. Not bad at all in fact. It helped that my guides pointed out the good footholds, but I got through rather quickly, up to the top bit of the water fall and all I had to do then was pull myself up over that edge.

So. Yeah. Caving.

I’d give it another go.

Emerging from the cave

Not just because of the adventure, bragging rights, epicness of my time in the caves, but because they are rather beautiful (the glowworms are a plus). And I’d love to get a chance to spend more time in similar places

There was a little museum about the caves, too, that I got the chance to poke around in and learn a bit about the geology of the area and some cool cave stuff that I didn’t know about. But what I also though was interesting was the history of the discovery and exploration of the caves and the challenges of conserving the beauty of the caves presented by human activities in them. This was the start of my little investigation into conservation/restoration in New Zealand, so look out for a rambly, maybe rant-y and lecture-y post about that inspired by my visit to a wonderful place outside of Wellington called Zealandia…