Waitomo Caves

This post will be photo-less as this was not an adventure which allowed a camera, but I have convinced myself it is good to write a post that I cannot include photos with because it will motivate me to sort out and organize the several hundred photos I took on my brother and I's road trip of the South Island :) I will fill you all in on that soon as I get something done with the photos and figure the best way to organize what I'd like to tell you about.

Shortly after arriving in New Zealand (while I was taking the bus from Auckland to New Plymouth my first week here to be exact), I saw a sign for black water rafting to see glowworms at the Waitomo Caves. So naturally I added this activity to my New Zealand bucket list.

So my brother and I showed up, filled out the necessary waivers, medical forms, etc. and off we went with our guide. There were 12 of us in the group, 2 French people, and 8 Germans. First stop was to get gear. The morning was a bit chilly, probably about 55 degrees, so it was absolutely delightful to put a wet, cold, clammy wetsuit on over our swimsuits :) We also got boots, and cool helmets with lights on them. Once we'd donned our gear, we each grabbed an inner tube and were off.

It took about an hour and a half to get through the cave. Part of the time we were drifting along in the dark (we'd turned our lights off) so we could see the glowworms. It was gorgeous, it was like stargazing in a cave, at greenish stars. For those of you who are not sure what glowworms are, they are flies that have cocooned themselves in the caves. They leave strings of spider-type-web hanging down from the ceiling (called the "fishing lines of death" by our guide) to trap bugs to eat. Once they hatch they have a few days to mate and lay eggs and then they die. Pretty exciting life :)

Part of the trip through the cave was walking in ankle to knee deep water carrying our tubes. This is great if you are coordinated and not clumsy. Or experienced at walking in big bulky boots full of water :) I managed to only scrape up my knuckles a few times. I'll blame it on the fact that sometimes the ceiling was too low for me to stand up straight. A good bit of the time we were sitting on our inner tubes as we went through the cave. None of the places had terribly fast or rough water, but enough to be exciting. In slower places you just paddled yourself along with your arms.

For me personally (and probably most of the group I'd wager), the biggest adventure within the adventure as a whole, was jumping off a waterfall. Two actually, although the first was only maybe 18 inches high. The second was about 5 feet high I believe. What you do to successfully jump off a waterfall when blackwater rafting is to stand right on the edge, backwards (so that your looking upstream), put your tube behind your bum and jump backwards. I would recommend not spending too much time thinking about it beforehand, it is far easier to just take the plunge (no pun intended of course!!). The first waterfall wasn't high enough to really be much of a plunge, but the second one definitely was. So glad I had my mouth closed because I got completely submerged :)