Cave Rafting

WARNING: This posting contains pictures which some people may find disturbing. They sure as heck disturb me...

Rona, the lady who runs the Westport i-Site suggested a couple of things to fill my time there. She mentioned white-water rafting and jet boating which both appealed. Then she raised the idea of rafting in a cave which did more than appeal. The only snag was that the company wouldn't run the tour just for me and no-one else had signed up. The arrangement was made that I would phone them that evening and see if anyone else had shown an interest, so I did and, luckily, they had.

The tour leaves from Charleston which is about 25 km south of Westport on the banks of the Nile River (delusions of grandeur by the naming committee, I think). Firstly, the three of us – David, Claire and I – were kitted out in nice thick wetsuits. The only mitigating factor about wetsuits is that nobody looks good wearing one and nobody finds them comfortable (at least, I don't think they do – I'm open to contradiction, but rubber fetishists needn't apply).

Suitably kitted out, we set off by minibus for the start of the adventure. The first leg of the trek is made by train, of all things. The company has laid a little narrow gauge railway to take folk from the road to the forest. Rather grandly, this is called the Charleston Nile River Rain Forest Train. Actually, with the current state of NZ's passenger rail services, this probably ranks as the third longest service on the South Island...

From the train, we set off into the forest, pausing only to pick up an inner tube each. Here are the three of us on a rather mobile bridge across the river:

It's quite a steep climb up to the cave entrance, but well worth it. On the way, we paused to catch breath while Howie (our guide) explained how the limestone around us had been formed on the sea-bed before being raised up to form the mountains we could see because of tectonic activity below what is now New Zealand.

Here's the three of us again just before heading into the hole you can see behind us:

As you will have guessed from the wetsuits, this is a caving tour that is going to involve water, so I didn't have my camera with me. Luckily the tour operator has considered this and the guide had a waterproof camera with him – all the pictures in this posting were taken by Howie. We were given a little card with a couple of photos each as a souvenir and all the pictures were put on the company's website for us to download later (something the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb people might consider).

The caves here are relatively young – around 250,000 years old which isn't much for a cave. It's a lot younger than the 600,000 or so years that the cave I visited in Western Australia has been about. Consequently, although there are some beautiful rock formations in the cave, none are all that big. Mind you, size isn't everything... The cave is almost completely natural – there's no electric lighting and no stairways, for example. The only illumination we had was the lights on our helmets – it reminded me of being in the gold mine at Bendigo.

We walked around a kilometre in the cave but it took over an hour. On the way we passed beautiful cave coral formations, cauliflower rocks, straws, stalactites, stalagmites, columns, shawls and many more.

In one cave, we came across some glow-worms. These are amazing little creatures that hang on to the cave roof and create light using a chemical reaction. This attracts insects who get caught in the worms' “fishing-lines” - like a single strand of spider's web, hanging down from the ceiling. There is something a little unearthly about seeing these little green dots all about you in the dark – Howie had us turn our lights off.

And then it was time to take to the water. This was why we'd dragged inner tubes with us round the cave. The lower levels of the cave are flooded with the water level varying depending on rainfall. For the first leg of the journey, we formed up into a little chain while Howie paddled us (backwards) through the dark. And then we saw why.

We'd seen a few glow worms earlier – probably a few hundred, but now there were millions of them, and I mean that quite literally. They're hard to photograph, but there are a couple of pictures on the website which give an idea:


Imagine the starriest sky you've ever seen – a really dark night with no moon and no cloud. Then imagine that the stars are only a few metres above your head, and that they're green. Then you're getting there. They really did look like stars – almost forming constellations. It was like a special effect from Star Trek, except it was real. And it went on, and on. We floated, quietly, in the dark while this amazing spectacle unfolded itself across the rocky ceiling and the walls.

It was, quite simply, the most breathtaking thing I've seen in a very long time. Possibly ever, but “ever” is a long time, and I have a poor memory.

All too soon, it was over, and we popped out into the daylight again. All I wanted to do was go back in.

The last part of the trip is down the river again to where we started. The river doesn't really run to serious rapids, at least, not when it hasn't rained for a few days, but it was still fun. I hesitate to post this, but I can only offer an unexpected face-full of cold water as an excuse for my expression:

After climbing out of the water underneath the bridge we started at, we stowed our tubes and made our way back to the train station to change back into dry clothes. A basket of drinks appeared and it was time to chug back down to the road:

Howie, our guide, commented as we dumped our wetsuits into a bath for him to clean that this was his real job and he did the cave tours for nothing. I think he was only half joking...