NZ: Day 15
Blackwater rafting day. So we got up early and drove over to Waitomo. My sister was going to explore three different caves in the area and I was going underwater rafting on the cave rivers. So I went down and got all kitted out in the wetsuit, boots, and helmet and headed off to the caves. The first part of the adventure was abseiling down into the cave. Essentially there was a hundred foot hole that lead down into the caving system and a rope leading down into it. You attached your little belaying device to it, stepped off the platform and descended down into the caves. The first part of the decent was open, with the walls being too far away to touch, then you had to squeeze through a small opening and then you could brace your feet against a vertical wall and walk down it. Lots of fun. That got us down into the caving system, but we still weren’t at the river. So we walked a little ways through the cave and then they hooked us up to a zipline and sent us flying through the darkness down to where the river was. Again, lots of fun.
We then grabbed some tubes and jumped off the ten foot cliff into the river. We rafted part of the way up the river and into the depths of the glowworms. This was much cooler than the glowworm caves down in Te Anau, because here we could actually get close enough to see the worms and the little sticky lines that they emit to trap food. We floated along under the glowworms for a while, then headed back downstream. Stowed the tubes and hiked downstream on foot, alternating between hiking in knee high water and swimming through the deeper sections. Meet a couple cave eels and got to feed them some bacon. Probably not the most environmentally sound thing to do, but it was cool. Got to the end and had to do some free climbing up two waterfalls to make it back to the surface. The whole thing took around three hours. Had a great time. There were some pictures taken which someone is supposed to be emailing me, so I may end up with some photos. Drove down to Turangi that night, to be close to our hike the next day, got some dinner at The Four Fish, and then passed out.