Day 10: Cavin' Down Under

Day 10: Saturday Jan 8, 2005

STINKY: When I wake up, I forget where I am temporarily until I inhale.

Rotorua stinks like rotten eggs, all the time. It’s because of the large amount of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) emissions from the nearby geothermal areas. If you’re lucky, the wind blows the right way and it doesn’t smell as bad.

WAKEUP: Waking up in a hostel is easier than one might think. Since we had 8 people in the room, and at least 6 of them set alarms for the butt-crack of 8AM, I had no trouble in grudgingly rolling out of bed bright and early for our expedition underground with the Black Water Rafting Co. We stroll down the street to grab a quick breakfast from a small cafe before we head out.

PIE!: I think I have finally figured out the official food of New Zealand: pies. I’m not talking about the typical fruity pies that we’re used to in States, but rather meat and cheese filled little pies that are really yummy. About the size of a small hamburger, these flaky pastries pack a punch in small package and are delicious. I down a bacon and egg pie, which of the available steak, mince, chicken, and other varieties seemed the most logical choice for a breakfast pie. I wash it down with a Coke.

COKE: Soft drink side note: Coke is damn expensive down here. Your typical 12-oz Coke, which is actually 330 mL, costs the equivalent of $1.50US. Ouch. Fortunately, there is no Pepsi here. The Kiwis have good taste. And, get this: no 2-Litre bottles that I’ve seen yet. 1.5L is the largest you can get. Still, I have to shake the soft drink habit before it breaks my wallet.

We load up our rental vans and kick off the 45-minute drive to the rafting headquarters. Nothing is physically close to anything around here. Once we get there, we perform the pre-game ritual of slopping on sunscreen, changing into bathing suits, and unloading valuables from pockets. The adventurous members of the group, which is most of us except for some pansy girls, opt for the Black Abyss tour, which we’re not quite sure what is involved but sounds cool and extreme. For $160NZ, it better be cool. They said it’d last a few hours so I figure I’d get my money’s worth.

They divide us up into groups of 8 and I end up in the second group. We kill time by playing some pool and I shoot off some random pictures. Pool down here is interesting, because the balls are much smaller and the tables bigger. I think it’s Snooker and not Billiards, but I’m not sure. Since there are still 15 balls on the table, we play it like Billiards.

THE GUIDES: Our group is finally called and we meet our tour guides. There’s a guy and a girl. I can’t remember their names but for simplicity we’ll call them Chris and Emily. Emily is the first to greet us. She looks like a typical Kiwi girl, not very attractive but witty, energetic, and fit. She’s carrying a cordless drill, revving it aimlessly while giving us the intro spiel. I can’t help but wonder if we’re going to be helping fix the cave on our expedition. Chris bounces up a minute later and the two jibe at each other for a bit. It’s obvious they worked together before. When we ask them how long they’ve been doing this, they answer “This is my first day!” like every other tour guide on the planet does to be funny. I let it slide, but I’ll be expecting better jokes from now on.

Chris's accent and mannerisms remind me of an uglier Steve Irwin, crocodile hunter. He seems to have a reckless appetite for fun, but enough confidence so that we’re not too scared. His Kiwi accent is fun to listen to, and his jokes are a bit funnier than Emily’s.

SUIT UP: The dynamic duo leads us down to a converted storage container that stores wetsuits. I knew we would be getting wet, but I wasn’t expecting a wetsuit. Having never worn a wetsuit before, I am intrigued. We spend a few minutes guessing sizes and selecting equipment. After 15 more minutes struggling, tugging, pulling, zipping, and adjustments, we’re transformed from Atlanta city boys and girls to grade-A divers armed with rappelling gear and helmets. I knew we would be doing some climbing and whatnot, but I definitely wasn’t expecting this.

The wet suits feel funny, since they hug every part of your skin. They work by holding a thin layer of water against your body, and using that as insulation against the colder water around you. Apparently, the water in the caves that we’re about to frolic in is a balmy 50 degrees F. Oof.

Emily cracks a joke about making sure everything fits right so “your love spuds” don’t get in a jam. I take her advice seriously, just in case. The helmets we put on are pretty nice; they have these cool little LED headlamps in them. Little did I know how much we would need them.

We’re bussed over to the obscure cave entrance which is a few minutes away from the suit-up facility. The cave itself is partially hidden behind some bushes, and if you didn’t know what to look for, you wouldn’t see it. There is a sign across a path saying “Caution: No Entry,” behind it which leads into darkness. Cool.

Abseiling, also known as rappelling, is doing a controlled descent down a rope using some specialized hardware around a climbing harness. We’re taught how to do this without killing ourselves. Chris tells us if we get in a bind to scream so they know we’re in trouble. Hmm. Once we get the hang of the technique, which boils down to tension the rope to stop, and let go to descend, we waddle over to the entrance and begin the descent.

DESCENT: There is a platform which goes about 10 feet into the brush and abruptly ends directly over a huge black hole of which you can’t see the bottom. There is a rope dangling down by the end of the platform. Chris clicks onto the rope and zooms to the bottom, making the descent look easy and to belay the rest of us in case we screw up. I’m second to last to go, but since I don’t hear any screams or loud thuds echoing up from the hole, I assume the descent isn’t terrifying and I look forward to it.

Emily clicks me onto the rope, double checks my harness, and sends me on my way. The descent is surprisingly slow, since the weight of the long rope (a good 30 meters or so) adds a good amount of tension to the braking device. I pretend I’m a movie star for a bit and do the hop off the side of the wall number, but I remember Emily telling us that might hurt our back so I don’t do it for long. The initial descent goes through a quite narrow hole that I just fit through without scraping on by. I don’t consider myself extremely claustrophobic, but once I was surrounded in a tunnel of rock hanging by a rope, I was getting a little uneasy.

A few more feet down, and I plunge into darkness. My headlamp is the only thing illuminating anything, but I’m still too high to see the bottom. Once I get past the initial narrow opening, the cave widens and I’m descending down a huge rock face. I relax again and continue down and make it to the bottom shortly after.

GLOWWORMS: Once I get down and unhooked, I make my way over to the group who is waiting. They tell me to turn off my headlamp and look up. In complete darkness, the ceiling of the cave is dotted in little points of bluish-green light. This cave is populated by glowworms, which are actually a type of fly as Chris will later explain. They are quite pretty, and as my eyes adjust I can see more of them. There are literally thousands in the small part we’re in, and we’re sure to see more as we go along.

ZIPPPPPP: We regroup and work our way to the next part of the cave. Chris and Emily shrug off questions as to what’s going on next. We get to another part of the cave and Chris drags Melissa, the only girl in our group, to the front. He takes her harness, clips it onto something, and tells us to turn off our lights. Then, he shoves her off the side of the platform we’re standing on, and it turns out to be a zipline running down into the pitch black darkness of the cave. Melissa’s screams bounce around and become progressively more faint until she hits the bottom of the zipline.

Going down a zipline is one thing, going down a zipline in absolute darkness and not knowing when you’re going to hit is another. It was exhilarating, and I couldn’t help but giggle a little (after “woooooooooo!”ing all the way down) as I hit the bottom. They unhook me and the rest of the group zips in one by one.

This part of the cave is much larger, and there are many more glowworms. They almost look like a blue-green starry night, except that we’re in a cave. I notice a pile of inner tubes sitting in the corner of the cave, I hear a riving running in the background, and I figure out where our wetsuits are going to come into play.

TUBIN': We each grab a tube, make our way over to the edge of a rock, and look down the 8-foot drop to the water below. One by one, we jump in, butt-first, and with a loud slap hit the cold water. When I go, I nearly flip over from rotating too much, but survive. The cold water is like a slap in the face, and stings for a few minutes until my body heat warms up the insulating layer in the wetsuit.

We paddle a few minutes up the underground river, and find some gunk on the walls of the cave that doubles as face paint. We all put some on, and as a result we look like some weird combination of miners and divers sitting butt-first in inner tubes.

We continue upstream for a while, where Chris explains the nature of the glowworm. To make a long story short, the glowworms are the larvae of flies that eat stuff that gets stuck in their snot, their shit glows, and they turn into flying gonads with only two days to live when they become flies. Fascinating.

We form a chain and float down the river while looking up at the top of the cave. By this point I’m fairly warm despite the 50 degree water thanks to the wetsuit. The glowworms are beautiful and the 5-10 minute float is very peaceful.

At this point, we ditch the inner tubes and begin the cave exploration part of the journey. This was the most fun part by far. We float down the river for a bit in just our wetsuits. The buoyancy of the wetsuit helps quite a bit with this. We have to keep our feet down so our butts don’t smack against the random rocks at the bottom of the shallow river.

EXPLORING: The rest of the trip consists of spelunking throughout the cave, gradually making our way to the top. We follow the river most of the time, at points climbing up underground water falls which looked flat out impossible to do. With some egging on from Chris and Emily, however, they proved to be manageable, and by the time I complete each one (There were three), I feel quite accomplished. I was first up for one of them, which is always scary in itself. At one point, we have to navigate under a rock face that is only inches above the water line, leaving just enough room for your head to stick up while crawling through on your belly. Some of the guys in the group don't like this at all.

At the final waterfall, Chris tells me to turn off my headlamp once I get to the top of the waterfall and try to feel my way out of the cave by following the stream. While not all that difficult, fumbling around in a completely dark cave proved to be quite eerie and I will admit I was a bit scared. Once I caught a glimpse of sunlight though, I knew we had reached the end and it was like crossing the finish line of a long race.

Part of me wanted to do it again right away, but I was pretty sore and tired from the whole ordeal and I was relieved when they provided us with hot showers and soup afterwards. I wish I could have taken pictures down there, but it was too dark for an underwater disposable (as Jeff found out first hand) and too hazardous for my precious digital camera.

The total experience was incredible and it really gave me a new perspective on extreme sports.
I am starting to understand why New Zealand is the extreme sports capital of the world.

When we get back, everyone's pretty worn out, but we hit up the bars for a little bit for good measure. Nothing too exciting to note from that, except the house beer at the Pig and Whistle sucks.

Tomorrow: Rafting!
--P