Haggas Honking Holes

How did I get myself into this?

I was wedged between two rocks. My butt and legs were flailing around out of the hole for all below waiting for their turn to climb up the rocks and through the opening to see. I tried to worm my way through, mermaid style wiggling my body through the hole. I tried shaking my whole body, I tried head to toe squirming, I tried rocking back and forth—I must’ve looked like a beached whale. I was exhausted. Not only do wetsuits add at least what felt like 20 pounds, but my boots were overflowing with heaps of water sloshing about as I frantically heaved them around and my body was exhausted from the terror/work of making my way through a cave for two hours.

I managed to suck it in and squeeze through the rocks. I looked down to see one of our caving guides, Ian, hiding a smile as I grimaced back. He had definitely been watching my 5 minute/10 hour wiggle episode.

I went caving. It was in a place called Haggas Honking Holes—so named for the didgeridoo like holes in the cave, available to blow into and emit rumbling tones for all to hear.

For some reason, I thought I hadn’t had enough adventure in my life, so chose Haggas as my cave to explore—the more intense “wet” cave. The cave was made famous by a stint on Planet Earth, as well as where I’ve heard the terrifying movie was made about cavers who go into a cave and don’t come out alive, The Descent. But the guides may have been pulling my leg on that one. I think they enjoyed our terrified expressions a little too much…

Haggas is known as a wet cave to most people because of the waterfalls you abseil down through and the pools of water crawled in. To me, it was a wet cave, yes, because of the waterfalls and crawling pools, but mostly due to the countless times I clumsily stumbled in and/or got stuck, of course, in big pools of water, to the point where I had my own personal waterfalls coming out of my tall rain boots sloshing when I walked.

Regardless of the wet water and the bumps and bruises inevitable when someone like me tries to go on an adventure, caving was quite spectacular. Our guides, Ian and Ethan, were both nice and humorous. At one point they dropped us by our harnesses down a steep drop into pitch black darkness while we held ourselves in the fetal position so as not to hit anything. We were made to turn off our headlamps in the completely enclosed cave because,

“It is going to be a dark scary drop, so we might as well make it really scary!”

Still later, we turned off our headlamps again, this time in order to see the glowworms dotted along the ceiling, making a night light for the cave. I had never seen anything quite like it before.

So caving for me was mostly a humbling experience, where I had to give in to the embarrassment of people watching me flop around like a fish to fit through small spaces and over large rocks, and up steep walls, and down waterfalls. But other than the humiliation and exhaustion of trying to seem like a fit accomplished caver, it was astonishing and strange. Thankfully, there were no near drowning/death experiences on this adventure, so I’ll take the humility.

Cheers!