Well, not really -- not the kind of caving where you abseil into a sinkhole and speleologize your way through tiny dark spaces.

But this was my first experience of an extensive cave system where the only "improvements" were a flight of stone steps down to the underground river, and a flight back up, an hour and some later, on the other side of the hill.

You start with a motorbike ride from Yogya, past the ever-beautiful and delicately shaded green of the paddy fields. Then steeply up through tiny villages to the house of the local guide. Then up, up, up, on foot, in the way that all walks in Java seem to begin.

Once down the aforementioned steps, you're straight into the river. They did warn me to bring dry clothes, with good reason. In places, the water is ankle-deep; in other places, it's midriff-deep.

There are stalactites and rock formations everywhere, some milky white, some sparkling in the torchlight like diamonds, some folded like material. There are lofty caverns, and tunnel-like passages. In some of the caverns there are bats. We also saw little cricket-like things, and a few fish.

If you turn off the torches, of course, it's absolutely pitch black. Occasionally, you encounter little waterfalls (in fact, we had to climb up one, which was a bit of a work of art), but surprisingly quickly, the sound of them fades, and you're back in silence broken only by the eddies of water -- now plopping, now resonating drum-like -- against the sides of the cave.

People did (and do) use this cave for meditation, sometimes staying two or three days in the darkness, without food or drink... Rather them than me.

It's pretty tough going, especially for those of us who are built more for stamina than for agility. You're constantly watching your step on the riverbed, as the depth changes all the time, and you're constantly watching out for overhead outcrops. In places, you're bent double, wading under low roofs. It's exhausting -- nothing about this walking is how you normally do walking. It never felt claustrophobic, though. The tight bits didn't last long enough to be worrying.

I was glad of the experience, but also glad to emerge into the world I'm more adapted to...

Raining when we came out. So what didn't get wet from the river got wet from the rain.

Having negotiated the cave without mishap, and also the very slippery descent of the hill, I was mortified to slip on the steps down from the toilet... I suspect I'm going to know about the resultant sore back for an unpleasantly large number of days...

Once the rain had stopped, and a couple of restorative bakwan had been eaten, we journeyed on to Pantai Depok, similar to but slightly quieter than Parangtritis. This is a black sand beach, and therefore hot as. And as at Parangtritis, the sea is much too dangerous to swim in. But it's very popular. Some people sit on the beach just enjoying the view of the waves, but most eat, drink, buy, take photos, and roar up and down on beach buggies. We had coconuts (a meal in themselves) at a beachside cafe, and people-watched for a while.

The journey home was slightly purgatorial, on account of my back, but we made it.

I'm not, at the end of the day, an underground person. But it was worth the suffering to experience, for once, a naked cave.