Time Warp Post: Dateline June 12, 2004- directly after Helicopter Flying Lesson.
A nice lady in Tumu Tumu Cave. Photo courtesy of Waitomo Adventures.
Hopping into an imported Japanese kindergarten bus covered with katakana Japanese writing and bubble-faced
cartoon characters. Isn’t that how all adventures start? With Hello Kitty?
Hello Kitty bus driver deposits the cheerful adventurers to a shed like a barrel made of corrugated iron and cut in half. Time to squeeze into an already wet and very cold wetsuit. Or in my case three. The first one the guide gave me was too small, the second too big. Wetsuit choice the Goldilocks way.
By the third one, I’m too tired to argue anymore. If you have ever dealt with wetsuits, you know that just getting in the bloody thing is quite energy sapping. And that is if they are dry. The main problems here are 1) they are wet and 2) they only have men’s wetsuits. I am NOT shaped like a man. Neither were the other women in the group. So much for New Zealand’s international reputation for Gender Equality.
The fit was fascinating. The legs were miles too long, the top way too tight for the girls and the crotch of the suit hung several inches below where it should creating a lovely penguin waddling effect when I walked.
Having donned wet suit over togs (swimsuit), wet suit jacket, booties, gloves, gorgeous white gumboots (rubber boots, Wellingtons), and a helmet with a headlight off we go for a 20 minute walk penguin style down to the cave slipping and sliding on the wet grass.
I eye the ladder at the cave entrance suspiciously. Just getting on the ladder is an adventure. You have to balance on a wooden plank, hold onto a suspended rope and lower yourself onto the rungs. Then scrabbling around that last tight bit of the rock, you descend.
Once in the cave, we start clambering over rock and mud, heading down. Slipping and sliding, crawling on hands and knees, avoiding stalactites on the ceiling. The waist and chest deep water lets us know where all of the weak points of the wetsuit are as the water trickles in.
The Adventure continues in Waitomo Black Water Rafting II
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