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Published: July 13th 2008
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Today started just like yesterday...in the dark. Sunrise is about 7:30am, so naturally with my always waking early habit, I was up well before then. Today wasn't going to be like yesterday, today I was going Black Water Rafting! (more on that later, and an actual explanation of what it is.)
I awoke at 5:30am after what was a fairly bad nights sleep, the bed was comfy enough and no one was snoring, but it was a Saturday night and there was a bit of noise and music coming from outside, it wasn't too bad though and I got enough sleep. I went downstairs to meet the bus at 7am and he took me, and a few other people, down to where the main bus for the day would be picking us up.
This bus was not a bus like the ordinary sense of the word, this thing was MASSIVE! A double decker, with only one deck for passengers, downstairs was a kitchen and toilet and other stuff. Each seat had a tray table just like in an aeroplane and on the way down to Waitomo they served tea and coffee with biscuits. It was about a 2.5 -
3 hour drive down from Auckland to Waitomo Caves. It went rather quickly as the bus driver was talking about lots of interesting stuff about the area. I might add that most of this was unseen to everyone on board as it seemed most of the country was blanketed in a thick fog, this lasted till around 10:30am.
The caving adventure I was supposed to do, the 'Black Abyss' with The Legendary Black Water Rafting Company was closed as the caves were flooded out due to heavy rain in the area. This was ok though, as there are around 7 companies that do Black Water Rafting and the tour company found one that was still operating. It wasn't as extensive as the one I was going to do as there was no abseiling or rock climbing, but still awesome fun!
I arrived at the caves at around 10:30am, my tour didn't start till 12pm so I decided to do a little exploring, there wasn't much to explore as the town of Waitomo itself has a store, and information centre (including the Museum of Caves) and a couple of the Black Water Rafting companies. I checked out the 'museum'
and I use the word loosely and asked at the information centre what I could do. She suggested I go for a bushwalk, but to be wary as all the rain they had had could of blocked the path and made it very muddy.
Turns out she was right, there was a lot of water and mud everywhere, so I decided to go and wait at 'Cave World' the company I was going Black Water Rafting with. I chatted with the receptionist there, CK, for about an hour, she gave me a free postcard!
At 12pm, the 'limo' came and picked us up to take us to their base. The limo was what the guides called it, what I'd call it is an old van with bench seats in the back. And the base they took us to was about a 2 minute walk away (I know this as I walked past it on my bushwalk) but they insisted on driving us down. We got suited up in the wetsuits and we took the limo to the cave suit, about a 5 minute drive.
We picked up our inner tubes and hiked through a paddock filled with
cow poo, we were told not to step on it but not why we couldn't, until we got to where the cave entrance was. Once there we all laid our tubes down on the ground in a line and sat down in them. Then we had to grab the persons behind us gum boots (this was the reason for not stepping in the cow poo! I dont think anyone did). That was about it, down into the cave we went.
We all sat down in a big chamber and introduced ourselves to the group while our eyes adjusted to the dark. There was a family from Auckland, a girl from Germany and a group of five girls from Ireland. Eleven people in total, plus our two guides Rob and Rod (how confusing!)
We climbed down further into the cave, ducking and weaving through the natural limestone formations and we stopped again to look at some glow worms. There were hundreds of them all over the ceiling, they create the light to attract insects like flies and mosquitoes which wash down into the cave in the water. They then fly up to the light as they think it's daylight
and get trapped in the poisonous sticky spiderweb-like things they make, the glow worm reels them in and feasts!
We continued further down into the cave and water was starting to trickle down along the sides and from the ceiling, nothing too bad yet! Onwards we went and the water level started to rise, about halfway up my shins now! We sat down again and the guides told us a little about the first people to explore this cave. They sat down and listened, listened very closely and heard something that could only be heard in this cave. Rod asked us to listen, I heard nothing, Rod asked us if anyone heard anything, one of the girls from Ireland said "Yes, yes I think so", Rod asked us to listen again...
This time I heard it, Rod slapped his tube down on the water and a couple of the girls screamed! A bit of New Zealand humour. We turned out lights on and had a good laugh and then we were shown Footwhistle. This is the English name for the cave as the explorers when they were sitting looked at a stalictite hanging from the ceiling, somehow they
saw a foot at the bottom and a train whistle at the top, and thus the name was born. I dont know what they were on, but they clearly had good imaginations.
We went a bit further through the water and mud until it was deep enough to form our 'Black Water Rafting' position. Not at all like white water rafting, black water rafting is very gentle with no rapids at all, you just sit in your tube joined to the people in front and behind you and let the current of the water going through the cave pull you, in pitch black darkness. It was weird when you'd go around a corner as you could feel your legs going one way and not knowing where!
As we went along we started to hear the sound of a waterfall, it was about 2 metres high and we had to jump off backwards!!! With our tube behind us, we jumped off one by one until we were all down, then we continued our rafting experience. The next sound we heard was another waterfall, Rob kindly informed us that this one was 7 metres high! No jumping backwards off this
one, there was a conveniently place slide that we went down. The water was now low enough that we could once again walk and we continued for a little further, came to some stairs and made our way out of the cave! The cave was about 1.5 km long but it didn't feel anywhere near that long. Hot showers and soup were waiting for our arrival back at the base and then we walked up to see the photos of our adventure
This was an experience that I hope I can repeat again in the future! Awesome fun and a good memory to take away from New Zealand
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Jenna
non-member comment
Ha
Lucky another company was running... Hope the water wasn't too cold. But from the lack of mention of it, it can't have been too bad. Maybe my brother was just whining way to much about his water adventure in Queenstown.