Tourist/Novice caving in New Zealand:

Having had a quick look online there are hundreds of links to tourist trips and lots of club links to super-hard caves in New Zealand.

I was wondering if anyone has done any caving in New Zealand and if so could you recommend a guide book?

I am looking for long/wet trips, scrambles fine but where kit (other than occassional lifeline) is unnecessary. I want to be able to read up on areas/caves without SRT and ladders and without squeezes...

...yes yes, I know for most those are the fun bits ;oP...

Any info appreciated. I am leaving UK in November so info before then would be helpful (although I am not going to NZ until January.

Cheers people

LB

Ask Don when he's back from Peru he's done the 3hr & 5hr Tourist trips 
Cheers Paul

Hi

For caving in the Waitomo area of the North Island the people to contact are probably the Hamilton Tomo Group who have a hostel in Waitomo.

Tourist trips:- there are several operators in Waitomo doing the 'black water rafting' adventure trips, one of which involves a 100m abseil.  Being a cheap bastard I chose the least expensive (NZ$99) adventure tour which was to Mangawhitikau Cave. This was a 3hr trip with a 30m abseil in, some floating around on inner tubes, a bit of squeezing through oxbows and plenty of glowworms. You don't get to see much of the 8 km long cave and not very taxing for a hard speleo, but still good fun. Also the trip was lead by a proper caver.

Done a fair bit of expedition caving in the South Island so will try to help.  The first thing to know is this: other than the commercial operators (which any self-respecting caver will tend to ignore) information is extremely difficult to find as the Kiwis are very protective of their caves.  There is a cave atlas available for both islands but no locations are given.  You need to know the right people, but fortunately some of the right people are very helpful.  If I get around to it this week I'll dig out a couple of contacts and post you a message.  If you don't hear from me by Friday morning then hassle me as I'm a bit forgetful. 

Cheers people... and back to googling fun

paulf said:

Ask Don when he's back from Peru he's done the 3hr & 5hr Tourist trips 
Cheers Paul

Click to expand...

Don IS quite the busy bee!

And he was about 76 when he did the 5Hr Trip
Extraordinary Man  8)

South Island is best known for its alpine vertical caves, but if you are an experienced caver just wanting to avoid taking kit the original route in Nettlebed  (deepest in the S. hemisphere) is thru the resurgence upwards, during dry weather.   There are a few other walk-in caves but local caver contact is def recommended.  Some great surface karst at Arthur's Pass (road cross-island from Christchurch) and up Mt. Arthur, and the walk to Harwood's Hole is pleasant and the hole impressive.  

Thanks for those ian, found some pics of Arthur's Pass, v. nice 

I visited the caves in the Oparara Basin which is North of Karamea on the West Coast of South Island. These are an UNESCO world heritage site, and only accessible with a guide. The cave tour was very natural and fasinating for an experienced caver. Apart from a few steps, the cave was largely undeveloped and we used hand held torches (flahslights, not flaming bunches of sticks!). My own headlamp was better than the supplied flahslights in fact. The caves are protected due to the superb sub-fossil bird bones in them. The glow worms were excellent too. You could get up close (within inches of them) and also see the shape of the phreatic curved tunnel from just the tiny dots of light from thousands of them. Really well worth the tour in my opinion. As this is not an adventure tour, the cost was very reasonable too. There are a couple of short caves near the carpark which you can enter without a guide. I found a few glow worms and some cool spider egg sacks which I was able to photograph. Some nice limestone scenery too, with a couple of impressive arches over the river.

Some info here:
http://www.karameainfo.co.nz/opararbasin.html

We booked the tour in Karamea. They only run a tour if they have a booking, so aim to book the day before or earlier to make sure they can take you. There were no staff at the cave location, but the area is protected by electronic survellance to protect the caves and their bones from vandalism and fossil hunters. If you can't book a tour then you can still drive up and see the two small caves and arches I mentioned though.