One of the coolest days of my life!

June 12, 2006. Waitomo Caves, New Zealand.

Spelunking or Caving. In my book, pretty much the same thing. But granted I only did it once. But it was a glorious day.

Erik and I decided to go caving for a half day at the Waitomo Caves. Half day was about $70 cheaper, and being on a budget, that made a difference to me. But Lady Luck was once again, on our side. The owners/guide of the caves already had a couple booked for a full day and asked whether we would be willing to join the full day for the same price as the half day. Who were we to argue. =)

Anyway, the morning greeted us with rain and heaving winds -- to the point that there was a question of whether we could go caving. But we were on our way after confirmation that the water is not too high (A river runs through the cave.). The first thing to go wrong was the fact that our van picked up the wrong passengers! The other couple in our van was actually going on another tour, but didn't realize that they were in the wrong van! But within minutes, we were on our way and then stuck again. This time by a tree that fell onto the middle of the road. After a long chain saw search, the tree was cut into pieces and the road was again clear.

After getting into our gear (2 layers of thermal top and bottom, 1 pair of rain boats, a fleece, a rain jacket, a pair of long sleeves overalls, a helmet and a pair of blue rain boots), we went into the caves. And it was AWESOME. I mean really really AWESOME. It was 4.5 hours of pure rock climbing, abseiling, going down waterfalls, crawling through small spaces, and wading through waist high water. Like I said, AWESOME. On the way back, the water level had risen so much more that we couldn't go through some of the passages (no air holes). It was a wicked grand adventure!

When we left the cave, we learned that it had been pouring all day. And the electricity went out not only in the Waitomo area, but all of Auckland!

Side story: The first time our guide/owner guided someone through the cave, she unfortunately had a 250lb+ customer who got stuck in some of the crawl holes. Hehee.. wouldn't want to be him!