NZ Kiwi Experience #3: Waitomo

Waitomo is famous for their caves. Basically, all that's there are some caves for you to explore. A couple different companies offer caving experiences. We went all out: We went on "The Black Abyss" with the Black Water Rafting Company. It was as cool as it sounds.

After suiting up in wetsuits, we were taken by van to the entrance of the cave. We practiced abseiling (rappelling) on the side of a hill before abseiling about 100 feet into the cave. The opening into the hole was just larger than my shoulder width. This was the part of the tour that really worried Mary. There are no lights in the cave. You wear a helmet with a little light on top, but as you abseil, you can't see anything beyond your light. It was quite a rush.

Once at the bottom of the cave, we moved to the next feat - zip-lining in the dark. All headlamps were turned off. One guide strapped you in. The next caught you at the end. There were no indications of how far it was, how high you were, how dangerous it was. The guides had a little fun. They yelled things like "Send him over on the right." Then, when a guy ziplined, the guide at the end yelled "The other right!" and screamed.

Once everyone was done zip-lining, we moved to the end of a cliff and sat down. We drank tea and ate cookies while the guides prepared the rest of the tour. The plan was to jump off of the cliff into the river that runs through the cave below and tube for a while. We had to jump and land on the tube, since the water was so shallow. This actually scared Mary more than the abseiling! You could hardly see the water it was so dark and you had to be precise when jumping. The water was freezing, even with the wet suit.

We pulled ourselves upstream with a rope attached to one of the side walls of the river running through the cave. After a few minutes, we killed the lights and floated back where we came from in the dark - enjoying the main attraction of the cave - glowworms.

Glowworms are worms that attach themselves to the ceiling and walls of caves in NZ. They basically vomit mucus strings that dangle down like fly traps. Then, from the center of their body, they emit a light that attracts bugs and then catch them in their mucus. They reel up the bugs and eat them. The worms do become flies, but they're born with no mouth and no stomach. They live about 3 days before dying. They're purpose is to procreate, lay eggs, and create new worms.

We walked down the rest of the river; it was shallow. We stopped to cannonball into a deep side pool. We rested and drank some warm orange drink while checking out an eel living in the water. Then came the most fun part - we climbed out of the cave up a waterfall. As the water waspouring over us, we climbed up and out of the cave through a hole about the same size as the one we came in.

Total trip time was about 5 hours. It was totally worth it. We ended the night at a clean hostel. We had dinner at a bar nearby. I had a burger called the Clyde, as I recall. It was a burger, with a steak on top of it, with bacon on top of that. DELICIOUS.

The final activity in Waitomo was the next day on the way to Taupo. We stopped and watched angora bunnies get sheared.

NZ Black Water Rafting