From White Water to Black Water (or Crazy Things to Do in New Zealand Part II)

Drive about an hour east of Rotorua and you will eventually find yourself in the district of Waitomo. Unless you're really into sheep farming or forestry, or passing through on the way to hit up the surf spots around Raglan, you're here to see some caves.

The Waitomo cave systems are varied enough that there is something for all tastes. (Unless you're a speluncaphobe. Then you're screwed. And should probably avoid Waitomo altogether.) Assuming you don't have a fear of caves, you have a wide array of options ranging from the Disneyfied tours of the larger caverns, pumping busloads of tourists through per day; to fully-guided spelunking expeditions. There's something for every level of cave explorer.

Descending into the Deep Dark

I did my caving with the Black Water Rafting Company, who originally started leading people into the caves back in 1987. They offer up two choices. The Black Labyrinth Tour follows in the footsteps of their original adventure experience where would-be spelunkers suit up in heavily-padded wetsuits, helmets and boots before crawling into the caves.

In addition to manoeuvring through every claustrophobe's nightmare, the highlight of the time in the caverns is floating on inner-tubes along the subterranean rivers, staring at all the glowworms on the ceilings overhead. Contrary to the name, glowworms are not worms that glow. They are fungal gnat larvae that secrete mucus and waste products onto the silk snares they use for trapping prey. The glowing comes from chemical reactions within the waste product. But "fungal-gnat-larvae-that-shits-stuff-that-glows" isn't a very marketable name, so "glowworm" it is.

Learning to Loosen Up During the Abseiling Drills

Not content with only the Black Labyrinth experience, the good folks at Black Water Rafting later decided to extreme things up, which is how I found myself able to partake of the Black Abyss Tour. This trip involved putting on a harness over the rest of the caving gear and abseiling 37m down a sinkhole into a deeper and tighter section of the Ruakuri cave systems. After some tight squeezes, wading through some shallow pools, and a ride down a thirty-metre zip line, we were on a ledge overlooking the underground river. The only way down was to jump backwards off a 5m drop and landing on our inner-tubes in the water.

Not For the Claustrophobic

Floating down the river would have been more comfortable had the water not been so bloody cold, but the glowworms all over the cave walls provided more than enough distraction. In the dark, you could actually forget that you were looking up at thousands of dots of larval snot and pretend that it was a giant field of stars. It was mesmerising.

Taking a Break in the Caves

Once we were done with the relaxation portion of the trip, we jumped off our tubes, needing to swim a few hundred metres, against the slow current, to reach a point where we could start ascending. The buoyancy of the wetsuits helped to conserve energy that later expending slowly climbing up multiple waterfalls to our exit point.

Emerging From the Abyss

After three hours in the dark, we were above ground again. Little time was wasted as we hiked out to our minibus for the trip back to Black Water Rafting HQ. As conquerors of the caves; hot showers, hot soup and toasted bagels were to be our reward.

After Returning to the Light

Short of having a crippling fear of heights, water, tight spaces, the dark, cave-dwelling eels, or looking like a dork in a wetsuit, caving is something in Waitomo is something everybody should make every effort to do should they find themselves anywhere even close to Waitomo. I loved every minute of it. That much should be obvious from the pictures. In fact, I'm smiling so much in them that I'm creeping myself out.

Related Entries:
1. Crazy Things To Do in New Zealand
2. From Auckland to Rotorua
3. The Bit at the Top of the North