OPC Wednesday- Caving

Wednesday was probably the most challenging day of camp, for the group and for me personally. We set out early with intentions to hike to two different caves in the area. While I was initially under the impression that this would be similar to the caving I did as part of the five hour adventure in Waitomo Caves, I was quickly assured that "those don't count as real caves."

Imagine walking through a stream to a pile of rocks and climbing through the rocks. Then, you continue crawling and squeezing through more rocks underground, occasionally coming to a spot where you can stand up- but usually not. That's caving. If you have any inkling of claustrophobia- caving isn't for you.

Now, we were prepped by this adventure by our instructor who assured us if someone got lost, he could easily maneuver through the cave in a half hour. It also is a little comforting to know that these caves have been crawled through for years and especially that caves are not affected by earthquakes (good information considering the recent earthquakes in the country). Still, I didn't love the experience. While it was very exciting, I didn't enjoy scrapping my legs, hands and arms crawling through mud and tight squeezes of rock and I especially didn't like feeling trapped.

Overall, most girls in our group loved the adventure and were excited for our next cave after lunch. For lunch, we sat on rocks in the stream and after we were off on a walk upstream to the next cave.

This walk was through a gorge which means we were at least knee deep in freezing cold water walking for about an hour. We had a few unfortunate incidences of girls falling completely in the water because of the slippery footing which was hilarious at the time, but made them cold very quick. By the end of the walk, right as we approached the second cave, we had two girls upset and freezing and quickly realized we had to get them out of their wet clothes and back up to the van so we could go back to the cabin. Because we were in a gorge,we were pretty much stuck in less we walked about another hour in the water so our instructor had to create a way for us to get up the steep sides of the gorge. Using a makeshift rope pulley system, the girls successfully helped carry one of the sick girls to the top. Some of the girls had to go up and down the steep hill twice which was tough. I was so impressed by how our team came together and did everything possible to help the struggling girls in our group.

We made it back to camp and the two girls were feeling better after a hot shower.

Later that night, I recorded the girls in my group explaining what we were up to at camp, using many of their favorite kiwi expressions. I've learned so many different words and phrases from this week! I'm excited to show these videos to my students because they will love hearing the NZ accents.