by Cindy Gold

The “Lonely Planet” guidebook on New Zealand describes the blackwater tubing experience at Waitomo Caves as “… a three-hour trip on an inner tube floating down a subterranean river that flows through Ruakuri Cave … floating through a long, glowworm-covered passage.” It also mentions you’ll be wearing a wetsuit to keep you warm. There is a picture of some apparently enthralled tourists gliding in a big row boat through some wide, calm water in a spacious, brightly lit cave with a ceiling that looks to be about 20 feet high. That’s pretty much it.

That doesn’t sound bad, does it? For those of you who have never relied on a guidebook for travel advice, I’m here to tell you that descriptions in guidebooks can be woefully inadequate. It really is surprising more lawsuits aren’t filed against the publishers, writers, and photographers. Travel magazine editors, heads up! What you are reading right now is the kind of writing you need!

My husband Terry and I arrived at the office of Waitomo Caves a bit early for our scheduled trip, so we decided to check out the Cave’s visitors’ center. While waiting, I looked at the pictures on the wall of other “adventurers” such as myself and read about the history of the caves. Standing there looking at the pictures, I started to get a bit queasy. Some of those cave pictures made it look like the river was not quite a wide as I had previously thought. And the ceilings not quite as high. And perhaps it really wasn’t going to be brightly lit after all. But, hey – look at that elderly guy in that picture. He doesn’t look scared. And what about her? She looks like she’s really enjoying it. And that girl there . . . . Before I could finish psyching myself up, Terry and I were told that there was room on the trip that was leaving right away. Did we want to join them? Oh yes, we certainly did. (I knew if I had to stand around looking at those damn pictures for another half hour I might chicken out.) OK, the office lady said, fill out this questionnaire and release form.

Questionnaire: “Do you have claustrophobia?”

Me: Do I? What would they do if I did? I suspected that they would tell us that I couldn’t go, that I might freak out and they didn’t want a scene on their hands and so I’d best stay back at the office while Terry goes alone and meets another woman along the way who is younger and better looking and not claustrophobic. That bitch!

Me: No. Nope. No claustrophobia here.

Questionnaire: “Do you have back problems?”

Me: If by “back problems” you mean a herniated disk or two, well, uh, yeah. Who doesn’t? But if you mean am I actually wearing a back brace at this moment, no. So, no. No back problems.

Minutes later, our guides—two young, strapping, and extremely sturdy looking women—came in and escorted us unsuspecting tourists outside to an area that had a shed full of wetsuits. Guide #1 (I’ll call her Anne) explained that we would be wearing what she and Guide #2 (I’ll call her Sarah) were wearing. For those of you who don’t know what a wetsuit is, it is a pair of very constrictive neoprene bib overalls with Velcro shoulder straps. Over that, these sturdy ladies were wearing wetsuit jackets. As I was to find out later, these jackets are even more constrictive than the bib overalls. On their feet, the guides wore wetsuit booties. On top of the booties they wore white rubber galoshes. On their heads they wore hard hats with tiny little lights on top that the wearer could turn on and off by means of a big toggle switch.

Gesturing to her own outfit, Anne explained each item’s purpose. Her final words to us before we marched off to the changing room were, “Under no circumstances are you to urinate in your wetsuit. Never, never, never!” My first thought was, “This is a three-hour trip! I can’t go one hour without having to go to the bathroom!” My second thought was, “Hmmm . . . She didn’t saying anything about pooping!”

Off to the dressing rooms we went. We were all struggling to get the cold, clammy wetsuits on. As it turns out, the wetsuits had been used earlier that day by some other tourists and had not had time to dry. How many people, I wondered, had already worn my wetsuit that day and already cracked under the pressure and urinated in it? Time for some more psyching up: “Must control gag reflexes! Must not dislocate shoulder struggling with rubber pants! Must control urge to urinate!”

We victims—er, uh, I mean adventurers—then gathered solemnly in the courtyard near the wetsuit shed. The only reason wearing this outfit did not totally humiliate me was that we were all wearing the same idiotic thing. Almost. Sarah looked at me. “Do you have to wear those?” she said, pointing at my glasses. I said, “Only if I want to see.” She pointed to a bunch of what looked like wet shoelaces on a rack. ”You better put one of those safety straps on them.” Oh, yay. As if I didn’t look dorky enough, I now needed to add wet shoe laces hanging down from my dorky glasses. Fine. I guess this must be just an extra safety measure that some retentive insurance lawyers cooked up and surely there really would be no real need for such precautions. I mean, why would my glasses come off? Why? (Dark foreboding background music here.)

Anne then cheerfully announced, “To the van!” What! What van? Where were we going? Surprise! We had to ride in the van for a few miles to get to the caves. Into the van we went. In the rear of the van were two long bench seats that faced each other. There were about eight people on each bench seat, lined up and facing each other, like parachutists in an airplane. I looked down and noticed there were no seat belts. To no one in particular I said, “Well, I hope that the fact that this van has no seat belts makes this the most dangerous part of the trip!” I smiled and swept my eyes over my companions, expecting to hear at least a chuckle. Grim silence. Like me, I guess, they were all concentrating on controlling their pesky bladders.

We turned onto a dirt road and came to a stop by a lovely, forested area next to a fast flowing river. Inflated inner tubes hung on racks nearby. We were instructed to find the right size inner tube. The “right” size was determined by picking a tube up, holding it behind you, and then thrusting your butt through the center of the inner tube. You wanted the tube to be tight, but not too tight. The guides announced that if we were unsure about the snugness, they would personally evaluate the fit. My fear of humiliation was overshadowed by my fear of drowning, so I waddled over to Sarah and turned my backside to her so she could check the fit. “Yes, lovely!” she cooed to me. Others, thinking perhaps I might know something they didn’t, decided they better get their butts checked as well. “Absolutely fabulous!” Sarah exclaimed to the next person. “Oh my! Stunning!” she remarked to the next.

After we had chosen our tubes, we were instructed to sit, single file on the ground, in a column. It’s not easy to sit down while wearing an inner tube on your butt, but we managed. Anne then described “eeling.” To “eel” you position the person in front of you between your legs. That is, you sit behind your partner, looking at the back of his or her head. Then you attempt to wrap your legs around your partner’s waist. Of course, you can’t quite do that, since you are both in inner tubes. Then your partner grabs your right leg with his or her right hand and your left leg with his or her left hand. Likewise, the person behind you flings his legs up on your inner tube and you grab his legs. In this way, a column of tourists can float effortlessly and efficiently down the beautiful underground river while gazing in awe at the magical, mystical glow worms. Yep.

During our eeling instruction, Anne warned us that there were eels in the water that might nip at us, so it would be best if we didn’t drag our hands (which were totally unprotected) in the water. I’ve been snorkeling enough times not to be afraid of creatures in the water, so this eel nipping thing didn’t bother me. Some of the others seemed less comfortable with the idea. More on this later.

We walked down a dirt road, tubes in hand (not on butt) and stood next to the river. At the edge of the river was a diving platform that was perhaps 15 to 20 feet above the river. Sarah walked out onto the platform and turned to face us. She wanted us to each take a turn walking out on the platform, pulling our inner tubes onto our respective butts, and then, with our backs to the water, fling ourselves off the platform into the river. Yes, you read that correctly—fling ourselves backwards into the rapidly moving water. She said some other stuff after that, but I didn’t hear her because I was starting to feel the hair stand up on the back of my neck and my bladder pulsate. I pulled Terry close and whispered, “I don’t think I can do this. I don’t think I have the nerve to jump off that platform.” “Oh, you can do it,” he said, unconvincingly. At this, I thought of Mr. Rogers: “Spinal cord injury. Can you say that? Yes, I thought you could.”

“All right! Let’s go!” Anne announced, enthusiastically. “Who wants to be first? C’mon! Who wants to be first? Anybody? Nobody?” She studied each of us. Silence. Great! This meant that if I couldn’t bring myself to plunge backwards off a five-story (oh, OK, maybe it wasn’t five stories) platform, then maybe I wouldn’t be alone. Maybe there were more cowards in this crew than I had previously thought. Maybe we could insurge (is that what insurgents do?) and violently overthrow our guides, strip off our hideous confining wetsuits, and run free and wild to the nearest bush and urinate! Or maybe . . . .

My thoughts of escape were interrupted. “Oh, OK” Anne said, with a disappointed pout. “Maybe we should use the other platform.” She pointed about 20 feet away at another diving platform, a platform that was maybe four feet high.

My left eye began to twitch.

Down to the other platform we tromped. When my turn came, I stood on the platform full of dread, my heart pounding, my shoe lace eyeglass straps dangling, my wetsuit strangling, and flung myself violently backwards off the edge. I was totally submerged in the frigid water for a few seconds. I bobbed to the surface and then began floating downstream. I was still in shock from the cold water when I noticed the people on the bank screaming something to me. What were they saying? Why did they seem so excited? What did their wild hand gestures mean? Had my diving form been particularly noteworthy for some reason? Then I understood two things: 1) For some reason, all of the previous divers had gotten out of the water; 2) I needed to get out of the water, too, and FAST. I began paddling madly toward the shore, but the current was strong. Terry looked as if he were debating coming in after me, or maybe he was wondering if young, nubile women considered widowers “hot.” A healthy dose of adrenaline, brought on by the fear of drowning and the rage at being replaced by a younger woman, propelled me to the shore, where I stumbled to safety.

As it turned out, this was not where we were to begin our mystical journey into the netherworld. No, it was just a test to see if we could handle the current, keep calm in the water, and had enough brain cells to figure out you needed to get out of the river before getting swept helplessly downstream. I think I got a “D” on this test.

Next we started walking. We hiked for about 100 yards up a dirt trail that would presumably take us at last to the start of our adventure. Our wetsuits and our white rubber boots were filled with icy water from our river plunge, but it was a hot day, so the water began to warm up after about 10 minutes. We slogged on until we got to the mouth of a cave. The mouth of the cave was perhaps 12 feet wide. It was NOT, as I had thought, the size of a single lane highway, one that we could just stroll into, sit down in our tubes, and then float languidly along—you know, like “The Lazy River” at Disney World. I gaped at the entrance to the cave – a tiny, ragged, menacing opening. I could hear the water RUSHING past down there, not playfully and gently meandering along as described in the guide book. I could smell the ominous, dank, loathsome cave-ish-ness of it.

We were instructed to lower ourselves, one at a time, into the cave entrance and then sit down and wait for everyone to get in. My throat was starting to close up. My knees began to feel weak. My wetsuit started to feel tighter, tighter, T-I-G-H-T-E-R. And of course, I still had to pee.

Down we went. Once in the hole, we huddled close together, all jaws set in grim determination. Unbelievably cold water flowed around our feet. A small shaft of sunlight from the cave opening shone down. Sarah explained that there would be some spots where we would have very narrow passages through the rocks and that we should use care to stoop as low as possible so as not to hit the precious stalactite that had taken thousands of years to form.

Yes, she explained, it would be cold. But there was no sense “wedging” about it, which I took to mean in Kiwi-speak, “All hope abandon ye who enter.” She explained further that if we found that we were shivering uncontrollably, that was not good, and we should tell one of the guides immediately and she would give us some hot soup. Huh? Shivering uncontrollably? WHY would anyone be doing THAT? And give us soup? You better be doing a damn sight more than giving me soup if I start shivering uncontrollably!

Now here’s something that the guides didn’t mention, or I was too distracted to hear. There is only one way into the cave and one way out. There is no convenient point, say midway, to get out of the cave. No elevator. No stairway. No emergency egress of any kind. No way to get you out except turn back or trudge on to the end, even if you have had a psychotic episode and had threatened to kill everyone in the cave by beating them to death with your hard hat. No. Way. Out.

As I stared longingly at that tiny shaft of light that shone like an angel’s wing, we were offered a chance to return topside. Tough choice: Did I want to be a hysterical, shrieking, claustrophobic lunatic or whimpering, sniveling, crybaby?

Alright, alright, alright! Let’s just get this over with!

With our tiny little headlamps on, carrying our inner tubes, we began to carefully pick our way down into the depths of the cave to where the river was at its strongest. The cave floor was not nice and smooth like one would expect at any civilized tourist trap but was instead, well, cave-like. At times the water was only a few inches deep. At other times, it was waist high. At other times, it was easily over my head, but I have no idea how deep. But it was always inky black. We could see nothing below the water level and had no idea what we were stepping on or into. The cave floor was jagged and sharp and uneven, full of deep hidden pockets of rushing water and slippery rocks that caused our feet to twist in unnatural ways in their dumb-ass galoshes, as we pitched clumsily forward and tried to brace ourselves on the side of the cave, which was also slimy and sharp and jagged.

The speed in which we moved made me think of how Frodo must have felt, surreptitiously trying to follow Gollum through his treacherous cave, slogging exhaustedly along through unbearably cold water. Did he, as I did, think “Ow! Fuck! Goddamit! Ow! Ow! Stupid goddamn cave!”?

I struggled to keep up, staggering over the uneven, slippery cave floor, occasionally savagely twisting my ankle. This was good, as the pain and my gasping for air took my mind off of how frigid the water was and how we were quickly approaching a point where there would be no turning back and that even if I were to start screaming in terror and threatening murder (or suicide) if they didn’t get me the hell out of there, it wouldn’t do any good. They’d probably just gang up on me, hold me under water until I urinated in my wetsuit and eventually stopped struggling. Then they would leave me floating face down in the water with my inner tube still jammed over my butt and glow worms would come and devour me.

We stumbled onward until we came to some water deep enough to eel in. We assumed the aforementioned eel positions. I calmed down a bit. It was comforting to have Terry behind me, with his strong, manly legs wrapped around me. I don’t know how the woman in front of me felt about my strong, manly legs wrapped around her—she might have been having as much trouble breathing as I was, considering that I had my thighs in a death grip around her, perhaps causing hairline fractures in one (or possibly more) of her ribs. In any case, she said nothing.

Our guide signaled us to stop. I saw a shaft of light just ahead. What! Are we nearing the end!? I was positively elated (and completely forgot about the fact that we hadn’t seen any glow worms yet, so this couldn’t be the end of the tour). As it turns out, this tiny new shaft of light was coming from a hole in the roof of the cave that opened to the outside. We gathered around the shaft of light, and I realized that the hole was perhaps twenty-five to thirty feet overhead. So, instead of enjoying the sight of the sunshine, I began to darkly fixate on just how deeply underground were really were. Cool water from the opening dripped down upon us. Anne said, “As you can see, water from above is dripping down. Gather ‘round and open your mouths and taste some of it.” Several tourists dutifully did so. “Oh yuck!” she cried out. “That water is coming from the outhouse that is overhead! What are you doing!!!???”

Those guides had quite a sense of humor.

We eeled on a bit farther and came to a point where the cave was wide and the water deep and calm enough that we could just sit quietly in our tubes. Again we were asked to gather round our guides. Anne said, “As we mentioned before, there are eels here. We’ve brought along some eel food to feed them. They may take a nip at you, so you should keep your hands out of the water while they are feeding.” A palpable tension took hold of the group. I wasn’t afraid of getting nipped by an eel. I was, however, afraid of a bunch of panicked, eel-hating tourists freaking out and making a mad scramble to get the hell away from the eels and in the process knocking me out of my inner tube into treacherous black deep water and then kicking me senseless as they wildly tried to get out of striking range of the razor sharp eel teeth. I tried to back up from my group of fellow floaters. This was not easy, due to the constricting wetsuit and the fact that back paddling in an inner tube, even in the best of conditions, is near impossible. Anne suddenly flung some eel food in the water. The aforementioned predicted panic ensued, but before it could get too out of hand, Anne announced, “Ha-ha! There really aren’t any eels and it wasn’t really eel food I flung into the water! Ha-Ha-Ha! No, you silly geese! It’s just chocolate covered marshmallow treats shaped like dog bones.” And these treats were for us!

I really am surprised she wasn’t then beaten to death with her own thermos of soup or suffocated by having multiple chocolate marshmallow treats rammed down her throat.

We floated onward and at long last came to the sight of the famed glow worms. Deep within this underground fortress, with only the sounds of the water flowing and of our own labored breathing (or in my case, hyperventilation) we came upon the magical sight of the glow worms and the blue, fairy-like wonderland of lights they created overhead. I gazed around in awe, now understanding why this trip was worth all the effort and … oh bull-loney! I thought no such thing. Yes, there were small, blue pinpricks of light overhead. And yes, these lights were made by the worms. The guide explained that these lights were really formed by what were essentially maggots, maggots that produced mucous-like strands of goo that hung down to trap their prey. Yes, millions and millions of mucous-slinging maggots were immediately overhead.

For an extra bit of drama, Anne asked everyone to turn off their head lamps so we could see these maggoty lights in all their glory. With all the head lamps off, it was so dark in the cave you couldn’t see your partner (upon whom I was actively plotting revenge at this point) even though he was only inches away. Being enveloped in total darkness had an immediate effect on me. The strap of my helmet seemed to be strangling me now. The zipper of my wetsuit, which I had pulled up high to keep the cold water out, was crushing my windpipe. My lungs didn’t seem to be working at all—I was sure no oxygen was coming in. The backside of my sternum felt bruised from my heart’s crazed pounding. Had my wetsuit actually shrunk? It seemed to be even tighter than it was at the beginning of the trip. I began clutching frantically at my zipper and my helmet strap, trying to free my trachea, but I was beginning to tremble now and could only clumsily paw at them.

I leaned over to Terry (at least I think it was Terry) and rasped in his ear, “You’ve got to get me out of here. NOW.”

“I can’t,” he said. “I don’t think there is any midpoint to take you out. I think we just have to finish it,” he said helpfully.

I leaned in again and croaked, “You don’t understand. I HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE!”

“There’s no way to get you out. I’m sorry!” he said.

“You’re sorry. You’re sorry! YOU’RE fucking SORRY!” I shrieked. OK, I didn’t shriek it out loud, but I guarantee you, I was shrieking in my head. Easy, Easy. Calm down, I told myself. There is nothing to be done. I just have to get through this. Don’t think about being in a cave. Don’t think about being twenty feet underground. Thirty. Whatever. Dammit all to hell. Don’t think about drowning. Don’t think about maggots. Don’t think about your wetsuit strangling you. OK, you can think about strangling—but strangling somebody else. Yes, that’s it. Think about that. Think about how Terry is going to OWE you for this. You should be able to hold this over his head for many, many vacations to come. Yes, yes, my precious, that’s it. Think about that.

In this way, I eventually soothed myself enough to continue the journey, but only because I didn’t know there was to be yet another “treat” in store for us. As if the maggots weren’t enough! The water began to flow faster and we seemed to be catapulting through the cave, bashing into the side of the cave and into each other. We came to a point where there was a rope screwed into the cave wall. We were instructed to grab hold of the rope and pull ourselves forward. The purpose of this was to keep us away from the turgid water that was, we were told, creating dangerous undertows that could pull us under. Taking this admonition to heart, we clung to this rope and pulled ourselves along. All of this, I thought, just to see some stupid little blue lights. I could just go to Santa Fe and sleep in my niece’s bedroom and look up at her ceiling, which is covered with those plastic day-glow stars and get the same effect, without having to worry about twisted ankles. And suffocating. And death. And so on.

Our last challenge approached. We were off the rope now and carrying our inner tubes again. We came to a drop-off in the cave floor of perhaps 8 feet. The water cascaded off the drop-off into a deep (or so we were told) pool. Sarah gathered us around and told us that we were to face backward, pull our inner tubes onto our butts, and blindly fling ourselves off into the pool. How many times had I heard about people breaking their backs and necks diving into shallow water? Surely the guides knew that this water was deep enough. Surely. And earlier, where we were asked to throw ourselves into the river —wasn’t that just a warm up for this? Didn’t my jumping in then, without ill effect, demonstrate that I could do so now, with the same results? Didn’t it? OK, so maybe these guides do in fact know exactly how deep the water is. And maybe they know that we can safely jump into the middle of it. The middle. Wait. What if I don’t jump into the middle? How the hell will I know if I’m jumping into the middle if I’m facing backwards? HOW? What if I just careen clumsily off the edge without enough velocity to propel me into the middle of the pool but instead more or less fall straight down and bash my head on the side of the cave and it breaks my neck and the next thing you know I’m in a sip-and-puff wheel chair? And I get put in a nursing home? And some ex-convict nursing aide named “Cooter,” who has bad teeth and a tattoo on his arm of a human skull with snakes coming out of the eyeballs, is responsible for changing my catheter?

When it was my turn, I stood next to Sarah at the edge of the water fall and looked pleadingly into her eyes. “Isn’t there another way?” I whimpered.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I mean, do I have to fling myself off of this backwards?” I’m sure she could smell my fear. (Or was it my wetsuit?) She said no, I didn’t have to go backward. Instead, I could pull the inner tube over my head and then, while securely holding my glasses onto my face, I could jump face front into the water. Before I could make up a scenario about what THAT might mean, I plunged in and, seconds later, popped up out of the water, glasses still miraculously attached to my head.

I wasn’t wearing a watch, so all the while I had been mentally estimating as follows. Okay, it’s a three-hour trip. We spent about half an hour trying on our gear. No, let’s say it was 45 minutes. Then we had to drive about 10 minutes. Then we spent, say, 30 minutes jumping in the river and hiking up to the cave. In this way I could estimate how much longer we were going to be in this hell hole. I now estimated that we should have been out of the cave, oh, say, an hour ago. The minutes were crawling by. But wait! Lo and behold and hallelujah, I could now see daylight! The exit! At this point, both of my ankles were swollen from getting repeatedly twisted and jammed between rocks. My arms ached from clutching onto that rope with a death grip for what had seemed a mile. My hands were cut and scraped. My back was on fire from getting violently twisted backwards and from all that furious paddling. My eyes burned from getting repeatedly and unexpectedly submerged. I shook from the cold and fatigue. But when I saw that light—when I knew that freedom was mere minutes away—I began paddling with a fury that surprised even me.

Within minutes we were out of the cave and I was seeing the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen—a broad, blue, wide-open sky. I wanted to fling my helmet off, strip off my wetsuit, thrust my hands into the air and suck down the pure, sweet, oxygen while twirling around and around to some song from a suitable movie soundtrack. I restrained myself and instead just took off my helmet and unzipped my wetsuit a bit and sighed a giant sigh as if to say, “Now, wasn’t that something?”

Now, months later, I reflect on the inky terror known as Waitomo Caves. Was it an adventure? You betcha. Am I proud that I was able to conquer my claustrophobia and overcome the physical pain? Most assuredly. The most important thing I learned, though was this: The next time an outing requires a five-page medical questionnaire and a two-page legal waiver to be filled out, I will have the discipline, the courage, and the self-confidence to turn to my husband and say, “You’re on your own, bucko!”

This entry was posted on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 6:44 pm and is filed under Bad Trip, Great Stories, Third Annual Solas Awards Winners. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.