Glowing with adrenaline

March 22, 2005

Hopped on a bus in Auckland and headed South to Waitomo, famous for its glow worm caves.
Not wanting to do the standard "float in on a nice boat, look at the glow worms and float out again" option I went for the more adventurous (and expensive!) option of the Black Abyss tour with the Legendary Black Water Rafting Co.
I spent a good 15 mins negotiating myself into a wetsuit and various other attractive pieces of equipment but it was definitely worth it.
We were driven out to the cave entrance where we did a practice abseil on a small grassy slope. Apparently this was meant to prepare us for dropping vertically through the rock into the caves below us! The guides (who were really good and great fun) seemed satisfied we weren't going to kill ourselves and sent over the edge and into the dark.
After walking through the cave a short way there was a surprise for us. I won't spoil it for anyone but it was great fun and the first proper view of the glow worms.
We made our way down through the caves to a ledge on the edge of the river where we stopped for tea, coffee and a snack before launching ourselves into the river on our tubes (rubber rings). Using ropes running along the wall we pulled ourselves upstream. Once sufficiently far upstream we all linked up, switched off our lights and floated back downstream looking at all the thousands of glow worms above us. It was really spectacular.
We ditched our tubes back at the ledge and walked on through the cave system. We squeezed our way through a few holes before reaching the end and being given a choice of exits. The Walk of Tranquillity or The Waterfalls of Dooooom! You can guess which way we went! We squeezed ourselves into a chamber under the waterfall and them climbed up and squeezed ourselves into another chamber above before crawling out into the sunshine.
Fantastic!