Adventure Caving

We were a bunch of 8 booked to the Adventure Caving trip at the Naracoorte Caves in South Australia. All my fears and inhibitions from the previous Cave Rafting came back to me just before we reached the cave. I decided to shun them and enjoy the better company we had this time. We were befriending Frank our guide for the trip as the old man was handing us our overalls, kneepads and our helmets. We almost looked like miners except that none of us had anything to do even remotely close to mining. Just when Frank had finished telling us the rules of the cave, one of which was - everybody is to encourage the other and there shouldn’t be any negative words, came a remark that one of us looked like a baby seal in the overalls! Thus, the tour started!

The entry into the Wet Cave was through some rough steps, which didn’t quite give us the impression of what lay ahead of us. The first glimpse came in the form of a tiny, horse-shoe shaped tunnel which we all had to crawl into from one side and come out from the other. It wasn’t terribly difficult especially with one almost touching the foot of other with their head was good fun. We walked confidently thinking the novice adventure was probably beneath our capabilities. Next, came the Eye of the Needle. This was a small opening through which each of us had to squeeze our bodies just as a thread would into the needle. The hole looked tiny and wasn’t a perfect circle so it was narrow at one side and a little broad on the other. I wasn’t sure my torso would fit into it. But, when we crossed the eye one after another, it looked more and more easy and almost all of us went through. Frank waited for all of us to try the eye before narrating a funny story of how a woman’s boobs got caught and her guide had to push her at the wrong places to get her out. Thankfully none of us had that problem.

After that, we walked our way to a slightly more challenging part of the cave where we had to crawl and jump into a pit not knowing where our feet would land since the feet had to see the ground before the eyes could. I didn’t realise that some parts of the cave were loose and could follow you where ever you went. The support that I held to start my jump was one such piece that came along with me. I tried pushing it back and then realised that it was just a lump of mud and let go of it. The next challenge was only for the smaller built people and I definitely wasn’t one amongst them, so can’t really write much about it.

Our next task was to make our way through a narrow gap between 2 large boulders within the cave. Thinking about it now I am not quite sure how we did it, but I remember it being good fun trying to pull the body forward using the right hand while the right leg hopped forward, the left leg in the air and the left arm being used as back support in case the right foot didn’t land at the right spot, trying a balancing act every now and then. The twenty or so feet felt like 1 kilometre and at the end of it we were all soiled and grateful to the overalls.

Frank told us that we had done enough hard work and deserved some fun in the cave’s playgrounds. That statement got us all excited as kids. We hurried towards the play area anticipating the games that could be played in a cave. The rule of the playground was that the person ahead of the other had to take care of the person behind him/her. We started off by crawling into a narrow gap which ended in a huge cliff on the other side. We were not expected to jump the cliff and return alive, but to land over a safer ground. From there, it was walking, jumping and leaping until we returned to the spot we started from via another route. We didn’t realise that we had spent close to 2.5 hours in the cave until Frank told us that he was getting late for his next tour. What everybody did in 1.5 hours, our group did in 2.5 hours not because we were particularly slow at any point, but probably because ours must have been the most talkative and fun-loving bunch in that cave, who wanted to explore more than what the guide had in store for us. All in all a wonderful experience and a thrilling adventure recommended for people of all ages.