Our Caving Adventure

Being Easter holidays and having a week off school, we thought we would save up some of our In Home Support hours for Noah, and have Di come for a big block of time on one day. It's so hard to do very much in a few hours so we thought we would have a whole day where we could do something with the boys that we usually couldn't do when Noah is with us. We thought that going to the Marakoopa Caves would be good as we knew its somewhere we could never take the wheelchair.

We arranged with Nicki and the kids and Mum and Dad to meet us there so we could all go together, but it was obviously a popular choice of activities on the school holidays, as the tour we went to was booked out before Mum, Dad and Nicki could buy tickets. We couldn't wait till the next tour as we had to get back to Noah, so we had to go ahead without them as the next tour wouldn't usually be for another hour.

The weather has turned freezing very quickly (only two days ago I was wearing shorts!), so we rugged up thinking it was going to be extra freezing in the cave. It has also been pouring all morning.

It actually seemed warmer in the cave, as the wind wasn't blowing like it was outside. Harri wasn't sure about it at first and kept asking 'this is going to be scary?'. We kept playing it down saying 'no - it's an adventure! We are going to go and find the treasure', and then he would look really excited and say 'are we going to bring it home!?'. Once he saw how pretty it was inside he was quite happy, as long as he was holding onto someone's hand or the rail.


Every now and then he would yell out 'are you scared Jalen!?', and Jay would say 'nah' and then Harri would be like 'I'm not either'. I'm sure if Jay was though it would've been another story.

We did the cathedral tour which is over 250 steps up. Harri counted pretty much all of the steps on the way up - from one stop to the next. At one stage everyone was giggling as he kept saying '26, 27...'. The tour guide said he hadn't counted how many steps there were and I said 'supposedly there are 27' and Harri was very proud that he was counting them for him.

At the end the tour guide turned off the lights so it was pitch black and asks if anyone wants to sing. Of course no one volunteered so the tour guide broke out in this song that echoed right around the cave. Kobe was way overtired by now and grizzling which was also echoing around the cave. We got him out of the pouch and by the time we got outside he was sound asleep in my arms.

When we got out it was still raining. It was nice to know we could still spend some time 'outdoors' even though the weather wasn't great.

On the way out we passed the tour that Mum, Dad and Nicki and the kids were on. They scheduled an extra tour half an hour after ours,as there were so many that missed out on the one we went on. The boys were so excited to see them, so we sat in the van and waited for them to come out. We couldn't stop laughing at Dad's 'hat'. We weren't sure really what it was - but it looked hilarious.

Poor Nicki had 'little' Alex fall asleep on her in the cave as well, and he is way bigger than Kobe so I'm sure her arms were killing her - especially as she is so skinny now! :D

We don't like leaving Noah out of family things, but it was one of those things that we would never get to do with him anyway. It was really nice to do something different with the boys and know that Noah was dry and warm at home.