Black Water Rafting

I rocked up at Waitomo at 2pm wondering where to stay and what to do. I had heard from a few people that the glow worm caves are worth seeing. I stumbled across a company called Black Water Rafting, which involves getting into a thick wetsuit and taking a big inner tube into the caves to ride down underground waterfalls and rivers. As I'm pretty extreme these days I thought, "I'll have some of that".

I assumed it would all be tourist-friendly and easy going on lit tracks and steps. But none of it, we squeezed down a hole in the ground which looked like a dead end to me, and straight away it was pitch dark. Luckily we had lights on our helmets. This was much more like proper caving than I expected and I loved it. We jumped down little waterfalls in our rubber rings, trekked through caves and shallow streams, floated along underground streams looking up at the hundreds of shining glow works in the ceiling above us, like a starry night sky.

The water was f-ing freezing. My toes and feet went numb quite early on and warmth is still trying to come back to my toes 90 minutes later! But it was great fun, even as much fun as sky diving I think, and it exceeded all expectations.

Black Water Rafting