Repelling to the inside of the cave

Last Day at the Kiwipaka, not too sure whether i’m happy or sad to be leaving. Either way, today was caving! We were heading to Waitomo, which was known for it's caves. The other half of the group had their caving day when we volunteered and then switched. They came back raving about it! Needless to say we were all pretty psyched. There were to options, an "extreme" cave in which you repel down and end up getting completely soaked, and a "rigorous" cave in which you repel down and zip line. Everybody said both were amazing, but I chose the zip line option (even though now I want to go back and do the other option too).

Our caving group

Looking down into the cave



A formation in the cave

Our group, of 9 girls, not the most adventurous girls (which made the trip quite entertaining), were bussed to the site. The cave was located in the middle of the sheep pasture. Most of the caves int eh area were owned by private farmer and leased the rights to caving companies. We, basically had to climbed down a steep sheep pasture; the guide had to hold one of the girls hands down (yeeah, that adventurous). We reached what looked like a sink hole, the cave entrance. One by one we repelled down half way, stopped and repelled down the other half. The cave was amazing, the guide pointed out different structures and formations, there histories, how they came to be...I was in love! We hiked through a lot of it until we got to the zip line, and one by one we zip lined across what was called St. Bens Catherdral (the patron saint of caving (I think)). The ground was full of Stalagmite formations, so the zip line was more so we wouldn't ruin it. But the experience of zip lining through was really cool. Towards the end there were quite a few screams, the caves contained one kiwi bug which are grasshopper/spider looking things that can grow to the size of your palms, which apparently like to hang out right by the exit. Despite the jumping bugs, the caves were definitely an awesome experience. Even more unique is you climb out and you straight in the middle of a field, I never would have guess something that amazing was lying right below our feet. After unchanging from our quite stylish jumpsuits, we meet the rest of our group and the Waitomo kiwipaka (10X nicer than ours kiwi paka) for a pizza lunch before we all headed back.

Me on the zip line