Gloworms: check!

So today I conquered my fears. I went caving.
We split up into small groups and chose between three different caves. St Benedicts cave was a dry cave with beautiful limestone formations, enormous caverns and a zipline at the end. Toomo Toomo Tubing was a wet cave that was supposed to be a bit relaxed and had black water rafting/tubing. It also included an incredible view of the gloworms that hung from the ceiling of the cave. Haggas Holes was a wet cave that included repelling down a waterfall, crawling through small spaces, and other more challenging ventures. Most imporatntly, that also had glowworms! I was feeling adventurous so this cave was my first choice. Unfortunately the list for this cave filled up fast so I settled for tubing. It didn’t matter too much to me because this cave actually had the best view of glowoms anyways.

So to prepare for the cave we were all fitted with full body wet suits, helmets and gummy boots. I looked pretty dorky because they had to tape my glasses to my helmet lol. Then, we walked in our gear across some cow fields to get to the mouth of the cave. It was an odd sight.

And there it was. The smallest little gap in the ground I’d ever seen in my life. (ok not really but I could not squeeze down without some manuevering). To our group’s surprise it wasn’t quite as relaxed an experience as everyone made it out to be. We were really happy about this because now we felt extremely adventurousJ The tubing was actually only about 10 mens out of the 4 hours we were down in the cave. The rest of the time we were crawling through cracks, navigating our footing on uneven ground and even swimming across the deepest parts of the cave through freezing cold water. At one point we were all told to army crawl on the ground keeping hold of the ankles in front of us. We had to turn all our lights out and we crawled through what our two guides called the “rebirthing canal” lol. It was about a 3 minute crawl through a tunnel where if I raised my back it would hit the ceiling. I had a feeling that if our lights had been on, we would have all freaked out because of how tight a space we were in . I was so proud of myself for being able to do this, and without panicking! The part where we actully did tube was amazing. As we lay in our tubes we gazed at what looked like a milky way of bright stars. These were the tiny little gloworms I had been waiting to see. They were scattered throughout the cave, but this was one of the biggest concentrations. It was breathtaking.

Gloworms have a pretty interesting life, in that it seems pretty uninteresting. They are actually maggots not worms and they let down tiny sticky strings from their resting place on the ceiling of the cave to catch their pray. The light that they give off happens because they have no way to get rid of waste. Aka they can’t poop. So basically they burn their poop and it gives off a pretty little light. After a few months ( and only about 3 pray) they transform into these little gnat like creatures. Unfortunately at this stage they don’y only have no way to poop, they also have no mouth. So they procreate, lay eggs and starve to death. They also serve as food for the other gloworms. What a life.

So I made it out of the cave safely and feeling quite proud. It felt like a real caving experience, not just a walk through a stone tunnel under the ground. I’m so glad I was able to do it!