Earlier today, I went on the "Haggis Honking Holes" tour in the Waitomo area. This has a funny name, but it was high adventure. Actually, it was all underground so I suppose that makes it low adventure... ;)
This trip is advertised as an abseiling caving trip, where you will get wet. Abseiling seemed to be the same as rappelling; perhaps there is some fine distinction I am unaware of.
After gearing up (wetsuit, caving helmet with a light, boots) and practicing with the ropes, my small group of three adventurers and two guides hiked a short distance to the entrance: a cave that immediately led downwards. I've done a bit of indoor climbing so I was a little familiar with what we were about to do.
But, there were a few differences between indoor climbing and what we did. First, abseiling/rappelling with a wetsuit on made it tricky. The guides attached a safety rope in case we slipped. Another difference was the fact it was really dark, except for our helmet lights. This was a caving expedition after all! After the initial descent, we walked along carefully, following the water to an underground waterfall, which we then abseiled/rappelled down. As you can imagine, having a stream of water pouring onto you was a bit distracting!
Just starting the abseil down the waterfall...
At the bottom of the waterfall, we had to get on our knees and crawl a short distance into another chamber. The tour was like this the rest of the way - at times we had to crawl on our hands and knees in water. At one point, for a short distance, we had to flatten out on our stomachs in order to crawl forward. I had a great time, but this wasn't the trip for people with any form of claustrophobia. For that matter, if you weren't prepared to walk on uncertain ground in the dark, squeeze yourself through some tight spots, crawl occasionally, and do some rock climbing, you really wanted to pick another easier tour.
Crawling on my stomach in the water to fit through a tight spot.
Later we came to a point where we floated feet first, and had to submerge our head for a second to get under a ledge. The guides said if the water were any higher we would have skipped that and walked around.
The guides covered some geology: talking about limestone, cave formations, stalactites and stalagmites, and showed us a few fossilized oysters. We also found some glow worms and had a brief lesson on their life cycle, which is basically lay eggs, extend some tendrils hoping to catch food, glow (chemical reaction to burn waste and attract food), and reproduce. The glow worms looked like stars on the night sky of the cave ceiling.
After the glow worm interlude, we headed up. This involved two or three rock climbs of 10 or 15 feet each. At least we didn't have to climb up a waterfall! Eventually we reached the first cavern we descended into, and followed the stream upwards to a ladder which led out.
Overall, this was a unique and very fun tour! If you are curious, the tour I took was this one.
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