What’s with all the caving anyway? I decided that of all the opportunities for activities down here, caving is the one that we don’t have too much of around the Northwest. Also, Sarah is a willing caving partner, whereas for some reason Cindy and Max don’t like crawling around in the mud and water underground! (I can’t imaging why!) So, while the kayak has been sitting neglected since Coastbusters, and before Sarah headed back to college, we fit in one more trip, this time to Puriri Cave near Port Waikato with the Auckland Speleo Group.
It had been raining heavily, and the rivers were swollen and flooding. We had quite a scramble up a muddy slope and cross-country to the cave entrance. I asked about the stream level in the cave, but “no worries”, you don’t have to worry about that in most North Island caves. We had about fifteen people, so we split into a few groups, and spaced-out our entering. It was a fairly typical stream passage cave, with a couple of side passages to explore. Sarah and I had both woken up at the wrong point in our sleep cycles, and had been quite tired and groggy all day. After a lunch break, we had reached a point in the cave with a 20′ down-climb, which neither of us were too excited about. While we rested, some people had gone on ahead. Just as we were deciding to give it a go and carry on, word came back up that the water was too high further on. So, Sarah and I were saved having to face the down-climb just in the nick of time!
But then as we started back out, what had been a flowing stream was now quite a torrent! Instead of knee-high, it was waist-high and quite strong! Well, that got our adrenaline going, because we remembered there was a low crawl further on. When we reached that point, the group backed-up while taking turns crawling through the rising water. Sarah and I might have gone in feeling tired and groggy, but by the time we came back out, we were wide awake and thrilled by the cold rushing water and adrenaline!
We tromped back out to the road through the soggy ground, Sarah stopping to corral a tiny baby lamb back to its mother, observing water burbling-up out of the ground, and me sinking to the waist in a swamp crossing to the applause of the group! While the rest of the group went on to another cave, we hitched a ride back with Michael and his son Tommy (thank you!).
Photos are here.