The Riwaka Resurgence is located in the Nelson Ranges and is part of a vast underground river system, other well know cave dives in the area include the Pearce Resurgence which is still being explored.

The Riwaka river source is in the Riwaka valley, only 20 minutes from Motueka and 1 hour from Nelson. It is quite a popular visitor attraction with a well formed track leading to the source, it takes around 10 to 15 minutes to walk, (best done in two trips if you are carrying heavy kit) a good chance to warm up prior to the dive.

LOOKING UP TO THE VIEWING PLATFORM FROM THE SOURCE OF THE CAVE ENTRANCE

Today we had a group of  7 going through the caves, Maxime and Margaret are cave divers from Switzerland and Mat, Shanon and Brian from Perth Australia. Guy and myself are acting as guides and packhorse’s to carry the extra kit including spare air. After dividing into two groups I lead the way and reel into the first chamber a short 60 metre swim, we then climb out of the water and make our way along the internal cave stream to the entrance of the second sump.

The second sump is a bit longer and we surface a good 130 metres into a very large chamber, along the way we see a small eel the only wildlife seen since leaving the entrance pool, god knows what he lives on in this seemingly barren biological environment. Here we take off our kit here and walk up the rock fall to view some very impressive limestone formations.

 POOLS OF WATER ON THE SIDE OF A HUGE TERRACED LIMESTONE FORMATION

From here the more prepared caver’s can walk over rock falls and wade through deep pools 100’s of metres further back into the cave, speleologist have explored the system and found a third chamber, but thats beyond my sense of adventure and experience in caving.

BRIAN CHECKS OUT LIMESTONE FORMATIONS

After 30 odd minutes of checking the chamber out we don our kit again and make our way back out of the cave. After 2 hours we emerge back at the entrance of the cave and make our way back to the car-park and a hot drink.

Although I have done this cave many times it is a great experience and for the warm-water divers from Perth, who were on their first cave dive they are rapped with the experience. Maxime and Margaret use this dive as an orientation dive and plan on going back later in the week for further exploration and to check out the Pearce Resurgence.

For those who are into over-head environments is makes a pleasant change to wrecks like the Mikhail Lermontov, although there isn’t as much to see as on wrecks like the Lermontov, the limestone formations are out of this world.

Thanks guys for diving with Go Dive, I hope you enjoy the rest of your travels in New Zealand.

cheers

Brent

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 at 11:36 am and is filed under Trips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.