We were now on foot, standing up in the water. As we proceeded through the cave, in the opposite direction from where we went to look at the glowworms, I became an appreciative of the fact of how thick (5mm) the wet suits were. The water certainly was not warm.
Imagine if you will, you're walking through the bed of a very slow-moving stream. However, in this case, the stream has no banks. Where the banks of the stream would otherwise be, instead of open air, a few trees, and some rabbits hopping about, you have the sheer walls of the cave. The depth of the stream has considerable amount of variation. At some points, the water is ankle deep. At other points, the it is chest high. Unlike walking through a stream, you have no choice in determining your course up the stream. If the water is ankle deep, you get to walk. If the water's chest high, you have to swim. You don't have the option of moving laterally to shallower water. In a stream, you might have the option to move onshore. You don't have that option here.
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Although I never fell, I was just a little bit unsure about how much grip my gumboots would have on the wet rocks at the bottom of the river. So, I thought it would be better to float and swim in the water and walk along and risk slipping on a wet rock. I guess I had more confidence in my mobility whilst swimming than on foot.
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One of the guys in the group said he
thought he stepped on an eel. He was putting his foot down and part of the
ground was not very firm. Suddenly on whatever was underneath his
foot moved out and slithered past his leg. Eel.
This did not help to calm the apprehension of some of the members of our group, who were less than happy about the prospect of some type of eel swimming around in the water around our legs.
Keep in mind that it is pitch dark inside this cave, and that the only thing providing light is our helmets. This is not like walking in your swimming pool where you can see both the ground underneath you and what's ahead. The water is pitch black, and you’re walking forward in it, with the complete article of faith that there's nothing down there that will reach out and bite you, or that the ground underneath your feet will continue to be at the same level on the next step.
At one point during this part of the walk, where heard some voices and some laughs. It sounded as though there was another group of people immediately adjacent to us. Somebody asked what that was, and one of our tour guide said, "oh that's the other tour group." That other group was a group whose trip in the cave system was more or less limited to just tubing.
The next part of our Cave adventure consisted mainly of more typical "caving" activities.