Caving

On the surface there doesn’t appear to be anything significant about Waitomo but people come here because it’s one of the best places in the world for caving. I guess I am one of those people. Zipping up the thickest wetsuits I’ve ever worn and given an unsettlingly brief safety talk and instructions on how to abseil we took it in turns descending 35 meters down into the black abyss. The first 5 meters you are praying that that the rope holds and getting used to slowly edging yourself down, then everything closes up and the earth swallows you whole, eventually the tight limestone gullet ends and you emerge into the cavernous belly of the cave with a ceiling of cathedral proportions. More confident now I kicked off the wall and dropped down fast. On the bottom I switched the headlight off and looked up at the countless glow maggots smoldering with their individual bioluminescent droplets. The entrance from which I had just come was now only a pinhole and the light barely scratched at the cave walls. Safe in the knowledge that there are pretty much no deadly animals in New Zealand I picked up a long legged insect that apparently when scared would attempt to jump into the warm moist darkness of your mouth.

Shuffling deeper down and hugging narrow subterranean cliff edge we reached a Witchline that crossed a seemingly bottomless chasm. I had the honor of going first and once all lights were extinguished I hurtled into the all encompassing darkness, I came to a sudden halt at the edge of a ledge and once everyone was safely across we sat and shared a thermos of hot chocolate and a flatjack. The hot liquid and sustenance would be greatly appreciated in a few seconds because we were about to jump into a bitter cold underground river. It was defiantly the best way to enter, like ripping off a plaster we hit the water from a height and with a echoing thud, landing on rubber rings. I felt the icy chill rushed down my neck and flooded around my whole body. Needless to say it took a while to warm up but we floated around on rubber rings for a time staring up at maggot shit. To elaborate these glowmaggots are a carnivorous and cannibalistic species of fly in their first stages of life and this beautiful luminescent substance that recieves ooooh's and ahhhh's is in fact their poo and beneath hang fishing lines of sticky beads to catch confused mosquitoes that are drawn to what they imagine to be night sky. After this stage of their life is over they hide in their pupas and materialise as flies to reproduce but unfortunately they have neither a mouths nor a digestive system and so die within a few days. Bit of a design flaw but circle of life I guess.

We continued to swim whilst gazing at the sinister constellations shining from the vaulted stone galleries, occasionally you would spot an eel or two slipping away into black. Further along the river the water came up to knee level and I took the opportunity to have the deepest pee of my life. venturing through what now had become a labyrinth of pathways we reached a point where things got really tight and you had to clamber on hands and knees squeezing though a half submerged fissure that the guides named the rebirth canal and I wouldn’t recommended to anyone who is at all claustrophobic. For me the best bit was the underground waterfalls that gushed directly through the rock, it was more like a natural pipeline than a conventional waterfall you might imagine. There was just enough room to climb up taking great care not to slip and grasping for firm rocks while the flow of water rushed over already numb hands. At the halfway point you had to crawl between a splinter in the rock. Admittedly I did think to myself with all the seismic and geothermic activity New Zealand is notorious for, what would happen if there was an earthquake, best not to think too much down here. We climbed a second easier waterfall into more persistent darkness, but there where trees and bushes. It took me a few seconds to grasp that we had surfaced deep in Waitomo forest, but it was now night and the branches of trees masked the stars, I could see my breath in the crisp night air. Altogether we had spent 5 hours below ground delving as deep as 60 meters, a incredible experience.