Overweight woman escapes narrow squeeze

By Tarryn Le Chat
08 January 2007

The famous Congo Caves at Oudtshoorn came under the spotlight again at the weekend when tourists were trapped for about two hours in pitch darkness inside the caves.

The four people were separated from the rest of the group and were told by their guide to follow the lights to exit.

However, the lights went out, the group were unable to find their way out. A Cape Town woman in the caves with the tourists called police using her cellphone.

The group were rescued after one and a half hours by the Cango Caves staff.

In a separate incident, an overweight woman, who had been warned by staff that she was too big to enter the cave, slipped while climbing in, and became firmly wedged, trapping 22 other people, one of them a five-year-old child, behind her.

Cango Caves manager Hein Gertsner said on Wednesday that the total cost of the woman’s rescue cost tax-payers anything between R30 000 and R50 000.

Rescuers battled for 10 hours on New Year’s Day to free the woman.