Waitomo Caving Experience

We were leaving a cloudy New Plymouth behind today to head north to the Waitomo caves for our first ever caving experience. Amelia went on a pre-breakfast run this morning and saw parents and children running back up the beach after catching an early surf to make it to school/work. It’s such a different lifestyle here (a very appealing lifestyle). It was about a 2 and a bit hour drive from New Plymouth to Waitomo and we had our caving experience booked in for early afternoon so we had time to stop off at the elephant and three sisters rocks on the coast. We didn’t manage to see them. At all. Unfortunately slow trucks and numerous sets of roadworks had slowed us down, coupled with the fact you can’t actually park near the rocks and it seems you either have to walk through a farm or somehow manage to traverse the rocks around the coastline (or swim) to see the rock formations. Therefore we gave up and carried on. 

Abseil training

We lunched just outside of Waitomo, with a much better view but still right next to the road with many large lorries engine-braking their way down the hill (loud), before arriving at the Waitomo Top10 campground (really nice) half an hour before we had to get to Waitomo Adventures (just next door) for our caving experience. 

Without really knowing what to expect we were bussed off to the start of our caving experience. We had two guides, Deni and Kenny, who were great despite the slightly delayed start to the trip. I’ll explain; our companions on the expedition were an American family, of Asian descent, which consisted of two teenage boys, one slightly older sibling, the mother and her sister, I assume the father, and an elderly Dutch sounding man. The elderly man was ill from the drive from the office to the caving site so had to be sent back and therefore the rest of the family weren’t ready to go for ages. Amelia and I were hanging around in our wetsuits for a good 15-20 minutes before they sorted themselves out. On top of this the weather was ridiculous. Very  sunny, not a good time to be wearing a thick wetsuit in a heated tin shed. Once we did head off the family seemed to pick up the abseiling fine, with the exception of the mother who was a self confessed ‘wimp’ and scared of heights and Sydney (one of the teenage sons) who was also scared of heights and the dark. So going into a cave (pitch black) to abseil down waterfalls probably wasn’t the best choice... 

Our first abseil was the biggest, a thirty metre (100 feet) drop into a deep cave. To get to this we climbed down a couple of sets of ladders and through a thin passageway where Amelia and I were stuck for about 20 minutes while the whole family worked up the courage to abseil down into the cave systems. What made this slightly worse was the insects, attracted to our head torches, kept flying directly into our faces and we spotted a couple of very large spiders. Amelia was not keen (at all). Once it was our turn we expertly navigated the drop, at the top of which you had to basically throw yourself out into a hole to swing into position to do the abseil, and moved on, ever deeper into the caves. Following this slightly lengthy delay the rest of the trek was brilliant. We abseiled down through waterfalls, crawled through underground rivers, were dropped through a hole, (I) almost got stuck in a tight bit, and eventually climbed back up a couple of walls to emerge back into the light. Kenny, the guide, asked if Amelia and I were climbers as we did the walls so professionally. An incredible experience, and very surprised I didn’t feel at all claustrophobic. I would recommend to anyone. 

Wandering back over to the campsite in the dying sun at half 7ish we had our dinner outside with a couple of ciders feeling pretty tired from the exertions of the afternoon A very good day indeed.