Drums in the deep. . .

We met up with Elsbeth and the rest of the cavers, Stewart and his sons Hamish, Josh and Ben, Jasper unfortunately didn't feel like going.
Our gear consisted of some polyprop underclothing, an overall and a bicycle helmet with a headlamp attached to it. Stewart and his sons of course had more professional gear, Stewart even had an old fashioned carbite headlamp which gave a surprising amount of light. The first day we were going to have an easy day (easier than the second day anyway) so that Stewart could see how me and Elsbeth would cope with the dark and cramped spaces. After a short drive and a short walk through the forest we arrived at the cave entrance, it didn't seem like much from afar but on closer inspection it was big enough to crouch through.
Our lights were more than bright enough to fight off the dark and the corridors were surprisingly large. We continued through the tunnel, sometimes crawling over rocks, sometimes squeezing through tight cracks. We passed beautiful rock formations, hordes of stalactites hanging from the ceiling and stalagmites protruding rising up from the cold hard ground. One particularly large formation was called “The birthday candle” and was a huge column in the middle of a large chamber. After a while, I’m not sure how long because it’s very hard to judge time in the dark, we sat down to have lunch. Josh and Elsbeth played a game of torch tag, a game seemingly without rules (they were made up on the go) where the point was to touch the other’s light beam with your own. After the exciting match (Elsbeth was clearly the winner) we headed back and descended down a caving ladder to the river. We followed this for a short while, as a sort of taste for what the beginning of the next day would be like. Despite getting wet up to my waist and having to manoeuvre through some tricky squeezes while trying to stay above the water this was fun. On the way we passed an impressive formation of stalactites that were covering a small passageway almost completely, like teeth in an enormous mouth. Soon however we returned and headed out by following the river upstream.
I wasn't particularly stressed by the dark or the confined spaces while in the caves but I was glad to see the sun again even though we had only been in the cave for about 3 hours. I was glad my cold didn't cause any problems either, though blowing my nose in a soaking wet, mud coated handkerchief wasn't exactly my favourite part of the day. Before we headed back to the car we stopped at a point on the walkway, here we attached a rope to a tree and threw it over the edge of the cliff; we were going to abseil down. After we all abseiled down into the river Stewart brought some special gear, which he told me would enable me to climb up the rope without too much difficulty. When I tried it however I found it to be far from that, Stewart told me the trick was to climb with my legs and not my arms but I couldn't stop leaning backwards and having to correct myself with my arms. My arms felt like a blubbery mess when I finally made it to the top, but at least I made it. As we were changing back to our normal clothes Hamish asked if he could drive us back to the campsite, Elsbeth agreed and he went to start the car. But it didn't start. The key broke inside the lock and it was the only key we had. After trying a few things to get the car started again (like taping the key back together) they somehow managed it and off we were. As we got to the campsite they dropped me, Stewart and Josh off while the rest drove to Hamilton to get a new key.
The next day was going to be a lot more intense than the second day, or so I was promised, so I decided to get as much rest as possible.
We entered at the same point we exited the day before and made our way through the cave, following the river as it cut its way through the rock. Eventually we stopped, it seemed we weren't going to follow the river anymore, but rather climb the steep wall to a tunnel about 10 meters above us. Stewart was going to free-climb up and then lower a rope for us as a security. An impressive feat, seeing as how our shoes were completely wet and covered in slippery mud, as he reached the top he lowered a rope for us. We tied it around our waist and were then to climb up the same way as Stewart, if we did fall we'd have a few seconds to find our footing again before the pressure of the rope destroyed our kidneys, not to mention that we'd be swung sideways into solid rock. Nevertheless we all managed to climb up safely, even Josh who was only 11 years old. We continued making our way through the caves, now passing through water, now wading our way through knee deep mud until we reached another climb. This time there would be no rope as we chimneyd our way up before flinging our body to one side and clambering up through a small hole. It looked terrifying and it was hard to find the right footing at first, but after the first few steps it was easy.
After a while of making our way through the cave, passing holes every now and then "You do not want to fall in there, it's very deep!" Josh (the youngest) suddenly slipped and fell in a hole, I couldn't see him anymore as I was a few feet behind him but I could hear him scream. I was afraid he'd fallen into one of the endless holes and broken every bone in his body, but luckily it was only a meter or so deep and he was more shocked than hurt. It wasn't until after he climbed out of the hole and we made our way over the rock blocking the path after that, that we found out it was actually easier to go through the hole Josh fell in.
We had our lunch just outside of a crawl poetically called "The horrible place", quite a long place you could only crawl through; in fact there was only just enough space to lift your head to look in front of you. Then of course there was the fact that more than half of it was filled with water and mud. Ben and Josh were arguing about who had to go in first, so I decided to be adventurous and go in first. The water was cold and the mud very slippery, it took me 5 to 10 minutes to crawl through but it seemed longer, and I was glad when the roof grew higher and higher and I no longer had to keep my chin up to prevent from mud coming in my mouth. After this Stewart told us to take off our boots and our overalls, apparently further up there were cave pearls which were extremely fragile and rare so we had to go in there on our socks and in our polyprop underclothing. It sort of felt like a weird slumber party in a cold damp cave. The cave pearls were shiny round balls that slowly travelled through a series of pools, growing bigger as they did. We had to walk on the edges of the pools in order not to accidentally step on them. When the river dramatically fell into a hole in the side we knew we reached the end of cave pearl country and turned back. This marked the end of the trip and we made our way back out. Stewart lowered us down the large cliff, he and his son Hamish chose to free-climb their way down. As we were almost out of the cave we suddenly ran into another caver, and then another one and before we knew it we were passing through a large crowd of people. After having walked through the dark for hours it was a shock to suddenly run into them, apparently there were also tourist companies going into that cave. Soon after we reached the end of the cave and made our way back to the car. As we got back to the campsite we said goodbye, seeing as they were going back to Whakatane straight away. Me and Jasper stayed another night and set off for Wellington the following day.

Diving pictures:
http://s713.photobucket.com/albums/ww138/lingonlas/Mikhail%20Lermontov/

rest of the pictures:
http://s713.photobucket.com/albums/ww138/lingonlas/NZ%20Februari%209/