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KOMATI
SPRINGS - SOUTH AFRICA
The member of the Triton diving Team Aleksandar Ljustina
met his fellow divers from Africa and Australia, beginning
this year at the Mpumalanga district in South Africa. They
decided to explore the cave system of the river Komati.
The cave system is in fact a flooded azbest mine. Digging
deeper and deeper the miners open a underwater river which
flooded the mine killing hundreds of miners. Once again
the nature was more powerful and the big machines become
silent. Now they are only wrack's from a "better"
time.
The mine was abundant and the nature slowly took it over
again.
A small house
that once belonged to the mine became a diving base and
a starting point for the expedition. Equipped with modern
compressors and mix gas filling stations it was the best
choice for this adventure.Because of the planed depth's
and times they decided to use Buddy Inspiration closed circuit
rebreathers.
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Diving in the lake that makes the river is allowed to anybody.
The penetration is only allowed to certificated cave divers
with experience and a proper equipment. In this cave system
a few dozen divers died. At the entrance of the cave there
is a warning table.
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Special
underwater lights for depths to 200m with a burn time of over
3 hours (35-50w), spear lights, reels, reserve tanks are just
a few special equipment peaces to be mention
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The
visibility in the lake was very low, and it get better after
passing the warning table at a depth of 30m. The water become
colder. The diving depth is now 60m. We penetrate the mounting
for over a half kilometer, changing from one level to he another,
passing many corridors. The rebreather, the line and the light
become your best friend. Suddenly you feel very lonely. It
is good that the rocks, corridors and the flooded machines
occupied us so much so we did not have the time to think about
other things.
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After
45 minutes swimming in the hart of the mounting and many layed
reels the turnaround point has been reached. Is the line still
in one piece? Are our lights in a good condition? We are not
aware of the instinct reach to the spare lights.
The way back is even more exiting. On a particular spot we
leave our permanent line and jumped to another that is leading
us another way out. Everything is going OK. At one moment
in front of us a brick wall appeared. Will we be able to open
the old steel door? We pooled hard, and the door opened. The
hole is to small to swim through with the stage bootless.
We push them in front of us.
The way to our deco stops went without problems. We are again
in the muddy water of the lake. We find our reserve deco bottle
where left them and start to decompress.
After a few hours of decompression we slowly accented and
let the sun worm us.
We are lucky to escape this man-eating mine.
*This
dives are executed by professionals. We do not suggest untrained
and wrong equipped divers to cave dive. In cave's like this
hundreds of divers died including open water instructors.
It can happen to you!
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...a steel door.
