Waitomo Caves

It’s Sunday, and Sunday means Black Water Rafting. This sounds a lot like white water rafting…but in the dark! How crazy is that? Actually, it’s nothing like white water rafting, and involves nothing more strenuous than gently bobbing through a cave in an inner tube. Phew!

On the way we stopped to see a tree. This is the largest totara tree in New Zealand, and therefore the world and, presumably, the universe (I'm prepared to believe there are larger ones in the multiple dimensions of the multiverse). This involved a short walk into the forest, until we reached a tree, surrounded by a fence, with a sign giving its dimensions. It looks like this:

The joy of this particular rafting experience is the glow-worms that live in the cave through which one “rafts” – especially when you turn out your helmet light to be in almost complete darkness.

We drove out early-ish to try and reach the caves in time for the 1:30pm tour that we’d booked with the Legendary Black Water Rafting Company. We’d packed a lunch, which helped with the speed as we only had around 15 minutes to spare, and needed to sign medical disclaimers before they’d let us continue. After that, it was the usual procedure of being given the safety talk, told what equipment and clothing we would be wearing, and getting us into said clothing, including some rather fetching white wellies for the ladies (Ian and I had rather more manly black boots). We then drove out to the start, and were issued with an inner tube commensurate to our size, to ensure that you’re not unstable when floating downstream. The final check was to practice our backwards jumping technique, as this is the way in which you enter the stream and leap over the waterfalls. This was done in the river in the light, so that we knew what we were doing when we came to do it in the dark.

We also practised the “river eel” position (feet up under the oxters of the person in front) so that we could do this when instructed by our guides.

A final walk down to the opening of the cave, where we posed for photos before going underground.

The water level was higher than last time when Nicola and I did this, which was at the end of a long dry summer. We didn’t have too much walking to do, but the guides did tell us that if we came in winter or spring then the water levels would be even higher. We’ll just have to come back again.

Down underground, we floated along, helping ourselves with hands on the walls or paddling to propel us, although there is a bit of a current as well. Along the way we learned about the formation of the caves, the glow-worms. (I switched off at this point, as there’s only so many times I can hear about the life cycle of the glow-worm, and that limit has been reached. Fortunately they kept it brief.) We also met Eric, one of the two resident eels in the river, but no cave wetas.

Towards the end, we were set free to find our own way out in the dark. This we achieved (frankly it would be difficult not to) and we emerged, blinking, into the sunshine.

On the bus on the way back, the guides said, “Hey that wasn’t bad for two guys on their first day!” Oh, how we laughed.

After a quick shower, we then had bagels and tomato soup to warm up, and then headed back to the bach for dinner – chicken and couscous this time, ably abetted by Ian on the barbie.