The Descent

One of the star attractions of New Zealand is the underground network of caves at Waitamo, and in New Zealand it’s a simple equation:


Underground dangerous wet caves = Black water tubing, waterfall climbing, abseiling and underground flying foxes. Simple.

Our guides for the day were Jessica, an ex-American, and “Turtle”, a kiwi girl. The usual light-hearted safety demo followed and we kitted up into full body wetsuits with Kevlar kneepads. We then had a quick practice on a rope, as we would be independently abseiling 35 meters down into the cave.

At the bottom it was pitch black with the only light coming from head torches flickering off cave walls. It was quiet with the exception of some dripping and echoed screaming from groups ahead of us down the cave. If any of you have seen the film “The Descent”, well its pretty much like that…except without the underground cave monsters that eat everyone…well, not on our trip anyway.

We flew across the underground flying fox on our harnesses and then jumped into some inner tubes to float down the waterways. The glowworms all over the roof of the cave were amazing. It looked like the clearest and brightest of starry nights.

Soon enough we left the inner tubes behind to go swimming in the freezing cold black waterways, flying down slides, belly flopping into pools and creeping through narrow tunnels that would make a claustrophobe flip their lid.

We met a friendly little guy in the water who you can see in the picture above. Apparently these monsters can be up to 6 feet long and 8 inches in diameter, and they live in the caves only leaving once in their life to go all the way out to the ocean to lay eggs. The babies then find their own way back to the caves to reunite with their parents – pretty incredible.

We stopped twice for underground hot chocolate from a thermos and some lush flapjacks whilst we took the time to chat to the other guys in our tour group. We were caving with a couple from Seattle, the guy was a Maths professor and reminded me of Ross from friends and she was a rock surveyor. Another bloke was a naval aviator stationed in Hawaii by the US Navy and the last bloke was a hulk of a guy with the temperament of a teddy bear who I think I overheard worked on a rig off the coast of the states somewhere. A cool group who were all up for a laugh.

All too quickly our 4 hours underground were up and we headed to the surface…but not up some stairs…or an elevator…but by climbing up a 3 tier underground waterfall.