The Alex & The Eleanor + 1

Saturday January 5, 2008
Punakaiki
Sunny and hot

Today we go back up the coast for an Adventure. My guide book described it as “not for the faint of heart” and “good physical fitness required”. Well, if you want to catch our interest, this is it. And to top it off, its Caving. Adventure Caving.

We arrive at 9am sharp and there is a big crowd people, but it seems that most people are there for an underworld rafting trip. There lecture is something like “go out and get gear and meet up for the bus, which will take you to a train, which will take you to the river. Have fun!” Our lecture has lots of pictures and “are you sure you ok with this?” There are 4 of us total. And we get our gear – a wet suit, harness, fleece and then rip stop coveralls. And of course a helmet. It’s quite a get up, and gets warm quite quickly as the sun comes up. Luckily we head out pretty quickly – in the ‘old van” – we are quickly learning this is really quite the adventure – they strongly warn and discourage people who sign up, they only run it once in a while, in fact the last time was a couple weeks ago. Our guide, Geoff, was actually the guy who discovered the cave, 20 years ago or so. The first thing is rapelling (or abesailing as its called here) down a 50 meter hole in the forest. Quite a start, and it keeps getting better. Climbs, crab walking about crevasses, inch worming thouh underground rivers, squeezing though very tight fits – its just awesome, and the formations and all sorts of cool things. Wow. There is no way you could do this in the States – no one would insure it. Just the coolest thing. So insane, so awesome, so hard to describe. Although it seems we are underground for a long long time, we get out and its only 2. Still recovering from the adrenaline , we have some lunch and explore the coast a bit – a gold mine, a seal colony. Then a quiet evening, a bite at a nearby pub, some stargazing – a nice relaxing finish to an awesome day.