My 1st adventure caving experience

No words, pictures or videos can express the exact feeling that I got from this adventure.

Swaziland has beautiful places and many are unknown or a bit expensive. Swazi Trails has the most exciting packages ever! They are quite pricey for me so I had them on my bucket list like down there, lol.

Looking all clean as we were about to leave for the adventure

I told my dear asian friends about it and they were excited! We booked the adventure caving for the afternoon, 2pm. We arrived at eZulwini Swazi Trails offices at around 12. We had lunch under the shade and then proceeded to make payments. On the screen were pictures of previous cavers and it looked exciting enough.

Up we hike! 

We were then made to leave our car, bags, everything including cellphones. We were told our tour guide will capture the moments. Our tour guide, Mseni, is a very chatty chatty young man who enjoys his job. They had a double cab car which we boarded and went up to Gobholo Hills which are situated at Bahai. There is this house up in the mountain inside the thick trees.  Im sure scary movies have a house like this. I was glad I don't watch such movies.

Inside the house, which I found cool by the way, there on the right are hanged white overalls and they look very roughed up. Torn behinds and elbows sent chills down my spine. On the table are over 30 helmets. This was getting real and I had this nervous and exciting feeling. Lucking Mseni (our tour guide) had better, newer and cleaner overalls from the car. He gave us our sizes and we dressed up. Gave us helmets and connected the lights. He then went on to tell us about the rules, I don't remember any of them. Blame it on the nerves.

That rock we are looking at, is the one I thought looked like a
whale. The image doesn't quite show clearly. lol. 

He locked up, took pictures of us and we all went up hill. It was not a steep hike. We walked, chatted, shouted, it was fun. 45 minutes later we arrived at our destination. He took pictures again and he asked us to go pee. They are actually toilets up there. Woman on the other side and males on the other. Im kidding! Its just rocks that separate us from being seen. Once that business was done, we looked at this rock which I thought looked like a whale. lol.

7 steps from our toilet break stop we entered the cave. It was dark inside, the 'weather' in there was different. We were breathing out mist, hahaha. The only light was from the small entrance we used. Inside was pitch black!

The keyhole. This was where we had to enter the caves. 

Bats sleeping.

He went into details about the cave, how to go about the adventure and safety procedures. Fortunately for me the only life in there are crickets, spiders and bats. I was so relieved!

The adventure began with a very scary slide in through what is called a key hole. Its probably a 2 metres slide down a narrow opening between rocks. After that it was so much fun. We went into bigger spaces and sometimes narrow spaces. We were used to it. We went down to the bottom of the caves where we found or rather saw a river passing beneath. The rocks were wet and slippery. One mistake would have landed any of us in the water beneath us.

We would make occasional stops in the bigger spaces and our guide would tell us stories or make us do fun activities. He even let us tell our own stories about anything. The caving is itself not tiring. We did hurt ourselves though as we would occasionally hit side rocks and hit our heads on rocks above us. Thank heavens for the helmets. We would occasionally also land on the wrong foot or twist our hands while trying to balance. It was nothing bloddy, just a few bruises. An hour later he told us we were going back up and the distance we travelled was about 300 metres.

Going up was another story. He would pull us up one by one. This one required strength and some level of fitness. There were places where there isn't space to accommodate more than 1 person. So we had to relay all instructions to the person behind. Sometimes have to pull them up. This taught us great team work spirit and also to relay the message exactly as it is. One mistake means landing down at the bottom of the rocks.

We made it back up to the entrance probably an hour/45 minutes later. He thanked us for being such fun people and that we were back safe. We went out of the cave to the rock where we took toilet breaks. Same routine, He gave us our water to drink up, and took pictures then rewarded us with chocolate bars! We needed the energy to hike down he said. The sun had gone down so it meant hiking down the forest with our helmet lights on. Such adventure!!

When we came back to our starting point. 

Mseni called the office to tell them we made it out. Apparently that is the routine, if the office does not get a call after some time, they will send a rescue team. We got back to the house, removed our helmets and overalls. Mseni then took our 300ml soft drinks bottles as we chilled by the balcony chatting about the adventure. So much hospitality. After about 10 minutes we drove back to the office at eZulwini where we got back our things and off we went.

We made it! All muddy. #Exciting

Thankyou Swazi Trails for such an amazing adventure. The money was worth it and my guests promised to come back to Swaziland for this adventure, if not, they will recommend it to other people. My phone had so many missed calls apparently they were worries we disappeared in the caves. lol.

                                                                    Its Adventure
                                                                           Ms B