Caving

On the way to Te Anau, we stopped off at some caves near Tuatapere, about 40 km from Invercargill. In one of those spontaneous decisions that often end in a brush with disaster, we grabbed our only two light sources (the light on my mobile phone and a Petzl headlamp) and headed into the cave. At only 350m long, it can’t be too dangerous, even if we’re on our own, we thought. The cave headed downwards into the bowels of the earth. At first it was pitch black and our light sources barely made an impact, but our eyes slowly adjusted. Christina was having major second thoughts, but somehow I convinced her to go on. Soon we were so far in that turning back was not an option any more. The wet and slippery walls of limestone eventually opened out into caverns and when we turned out the lights, glow-worms created hundreds of specks of light above us, just like a starry sky. It was beautiful. After what seemed like eternity, we finally reached a serious obstacle to our exit from the cave: the Swimming Pool. Recent rain meant that it was pretty deep – how deep we’ll never know, since we were not about to jump in and go swimming! Instead, we stripped down to our underwear and gripping tightly to an overhanging ledge, inched our way around the side of the pool. Even here it was up to our waists and freezing cold. One slip and we would have been in a very unpleasant situation. Fortunately, we made it, and with our adrenalin pumping, we exited the cave into daylight 10 minutes later. We’d been underground for over an hour. Relieved to be out, we were in no rush to head into another cave for quite a while.