Cave Adventure

Sometimes people ask me how Greg gets me into certain “adventurous” situations. Let me enlighten you… he lies. Today, Greg tells me we are going black water rafting in the famous Rukuri Caves in Waitomo. I’m all for it! Sit in a raft, check out some glowworms, eat some lunch and call it a day. I was excited. I even packed myself a bag full of snacks, a camera and a change of clothes just in case we were unexpectedly splashed on our tour down the river.  

We show up and 2 guides immediately seek us out and explain that it will be just the 2 of us. They tell us to throw our backpack in the locker, get on a wetsuit, a helmet and strap on a harness… um, a what? What kind of raft IS this? I thought perhaps they were overdoing the safety precautions, but I guess you can’t be too careful these days.

What did we actually end up doing? First, we abseiled vertically 120 ft into a massive, pitch black, underground cave (that is where the harness came in VERY handy). Second, we were handed black rubber tubes, told to jump in the river and preceded to see some wicked sites.

The caves were littered with glowworms, which in the darkness of the cave look as though you are staring up at the Milky Way. We found out later that it wasn’t quite as romantic a scene as we thought; what makes that beautiful glow is the worm’s poop. Following that we climbed through a labyrinth of small caves, scaled 2 waterfalls, and were even coaxed to do a cannonball off of a waterfall in the dark. Our instructor said (and I quote), “Keep to the left. To the right is the blender, step over there and you are done”. Charming.  We even saw an eel. Apparently it was a “baby” as it was only 2 ft in size. I guess they grow up to 8ft in the cave. This is where you take a deep breath and say, “oh well, no backing out now”.

In the end it was the most awesome adventure either Greg or myself had ever experienced. To Greg’s credit, I don’t think he knew what he was getting us into. He booked the tour online and decided to choose the “ultimate” adventure, assuming that the most expensive package would be the best. In fact, the day previous he was worried that we would be sailing down the river with a bunch of tourists snapping pictures trying to fight off our boredom.

Could Greg have got me to sign up for an adventure of scaling through tight caves, jumping off a waterfall and kickin’ it with some 8ft eels… probably not. The funny thing is the whole time I didn’t have so much as a pang of nervousness. It was a little baffling, as I tend get nervous picking a flavor of ice cream!

I guess that is a good lesson in fear for me. When I am deeply immersed in a situation I have full trust in my ability to handle it. I need to convince myself of that ahead of time in the future. Hopefully it helps with the still impending bungy jump!!