Black Water Rafting

We arrived in Waitomo this morning. The town only has 50 residents, so it is really small. The own appears to consist of the hostel we are staying at, a tourist information centre, a village store and a restaurant, there was a local pub, but it burnt down a while back and has not been rebuilt yet.

We booked onto a black water rafting excursion for the afternoon, as we though it was about time we sampled some of NZs adrenaline activities. After being suited up into wetsuits, helmets and boots, we headed towards the caves, but before we were allowed in we had to do a practice waterfall jump, which involved standing on the end of a jetty about 6-7 feet high above a river, holding a big rubber ring on your bum and jumping off backwards! The guide counted you down and the you just had to jump. It took me two countdowns to jump, but I did eventually jump off! The water was freezing! After this we were taken down to the caves. The cave's ceiling in the first part was so low, we had to lie back on our rings to fit through the small space. Then we were led through the caves, sometimes carrying our rings and sometimes riding them along in the current, which was surprisingly strong and it was easy to get swept along. We had to do two waterfall jumps, which in the dark and within the caves was pretty scary, but we all managed to do it. We stopped along the way and turned the lights off on our helmets and floated on our rings looking up at the glowworms on the ceiling of the cave. It was pretty amazing. It was a mixture of fun and fear down there, but it was a brilliant experience. I have never been so glad to see daylight by the time we made it out though! We then had hot showers to warm up and soup and bagels :)