Blackwater rafting in Waitomo

One thing I knew I wanted to do in New Zealand was blackwater rafting. What this involves is sitting in an innertube and floating through caves in the dark. And checking out the glowworms, which are the larvae of the fungus gnat and glow a greenish sort of light as they dangle from the ceiling.

After leaving Hahei, we headed straight for Waitomo, where we knew we would find glowworms, caves, and the opportunity to go blackwater rafting. Those of us who signed up for the TumuTumu TOObing got decked out in wetsuits, rubber boots, hard hats and head lamps, before making the trek to the cave. For some reason, I expected the activity to involve a lot of sitting in a rubber raft of some sort. I couldn’t really have been more wrong.

We walked for quite a while through Shire-like terrain to get to the entrance to the TumuTumu Cave. Then we had to work our way backwards, one by one, down a rickety ladder into the cave. Once we were all in and accounted for, we began the more than 2 hours of climbing/sliding/swimming/floating through the caves. It was a bit like the Cango Caves that I visited with Cullen when we were in South Africa. And by this, I mean challenging! And this time were were told to not touch any of the stalactites or stalagmites, since they were more likely to break than to support us as we manoevered through the tight spaces (though, thankfully, not as narrow as many of the spaces in the Cango Caves). And we had water and mud and many sharp surfaces to deal with.

In the long run, I think I felt safer in these caves because of the water. I had been very afraid of falling in the Cango Caves (I had slipped on the ice in Canada in the not-too-distant past and I didn’t want to damage my knees or tailbone any further), but I found that wearing boots, a wetsuit, and a helmet made me feel a little tougher this time – at least my ankles, knees, and head would have some protection if they came in contact with the hard and slippery surroundings. But if you ask the people I was with whether I seemed calm, I think you’d get a different response. The person who sat behind me when we had to grip each other’s feet to link the tubes together said that she thought the circulation in her legs would be cut off if I held on any tighter.

At last we made it to the end of the cold, wet journey, and bid farewell to the glowworms and the dark. It was wonderful to take off the sort of clammy wetsuits and dump out the water that had collected in our well-used rubber boots.

Once everyone was back on the bus, we headed off for the next destination and the place where I would stop off for a few days: Rotorua (which I was told is nicknamed ‘Roto Vegas,’ probably because of the dazzling array of things people can do in the area).