Black Water Rafting - The Black Abyss

An artistic shot of our Black Water rafting group
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After having done everything we wanted to do in Rotorua, we were up early (ish!) to head to the Waitomo Caves, famous for their abundance of glow-worms (and their excrement, but more of that later!). We arrived early (for once!) and checked into our lodgings, a pleasant place right opposite called Juno Hall.

After a quick change around we crossed the road to the base of The Black Water Rafting Company. Six of us had booked on to an afternoon mostly spent under ground exploring the caves, via various means including abseiling, caving, tubing and zip line! Unfortunately, Adam was too late in deciding whether to do it or not and so had to settle for the shorter version, thus not joining us on this particular adventure.

Posted by George

The Grove descending into the cave
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First up we had to get kitted out and put on the many layers that would keep us safe, warm and a float. We had all kinds of layers: wetsuits, fleeces, life jackets; and equipment: helmets for safety, harnesses and karabiners for the abseil and head torches for the ability of sight. We were also introduced to our banter inducing instructors for the day, Parker and Cowboy, who were to lead us on our darkened underground adventure.

First up though was a bit of abseil training, situated just outside the entrance to the cave. Here were introduced to the voice activated locking device on our karabiner. Basically if you fall, you shout, you stop. Obviously it’s only Parker at the bottom pulling the rope tight but it’s all I can remember from the training, as you’ll hear in a second!

Face painting in the caves
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We formed an orderly queue to wait our turn to abseil and when it was my turn, I prepared myself in the correct manner, descended a few feet to pause for the picture. In my efforts to pull out the ol’ gun pose, I took my right hand off the rope. Now for any one who has been abseiling before, and for anyone who listened to the abseil training this is you safety hand and must always been near the rope. Luckily I was held in place with my left hand on the karabiner but the photo still had to be deleted so Cowboy didn’t get in trouble!! After another photo, with the correct pose, I abseiled down through a tight hole, maybe a metre wide, before going into darkness. The technique here was to swivel around a walk steadily down the wall to the bottom.

At the end of our adventure
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After we were all safely down, we walked through a narrow cave to the start of the zip line. We were all told to turn our lights off to make the zip line that bit more scary. And it was! You were swung just before being pushed off so you would avoid the big rock in the way and as you zipped down you got the first glimpse off the numerous glow worms in the cave. Luckily we didn’t hit the wall and we all landed safely at the bottom.

After a not-so-well-earned breather with a cup of tea and flapjack, it was time to go tubing through the caves. We all picked out our ‘tube’, basically a large rubber ring, like the tyres you used to only use on holiday. Then we had a 15 feet jump, with our bum in the tube, to the dark water below. We all hit the water with some impact and after over coming the cold temperature of the water we were off to explore the caves.

The group stuck in a cave
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We pulled on a rope to get us down to the caves with the glow-worms in and it was here we sat back and listened to their story. The actually glow that you can see as you look up on to the roof of the ceiling is actually the poo of Arachnocampa luminosa, a gant species in it’s larval stage. A chemical reaction means that the energy omitted is converted into nearly 100% light, hence the glow. A clever marketing ploy by caves world wide some years ago is the reason we have an image of a brightly glowing worm reading a book in our head when ever we think of them.

After a short introduction to the glow-worms we were introduced to an exercise that was meant to teach us of local Maori culture and allow us to get to know our fellow travelers. The thin, wet mud on the walls of the caves made for excellent face paint and we had to use this to describe our partner in paintings on their own face. Usually you are meant to ask questions of your partner and represent them properly. Of course for us it turned into either a quest to make them animal like in appearance or to draw rude images on their cheeks.

With the paint still wet on our faces, we formed a tube-train and were guided back down the caves singing a rather delightful acapella version of ‘In the Jungle’. We then left our tubes behind to explore the caves by foot (and some gentle paddling). I think Natalie best described it when she declared it was ‘exactly like being in the Goonies’. We got a few pictures taken in various poses along the way and enjoyed more hot drinks and chocolate. We also had to wait for those who couldn’t hold it in, to take off their many layers just so they could relive themselves!

The last section of our adventure saw us having to climb 3 enclosed waterfalls in turn: Death, Doom and Destruction. These were very powerful water falls we had to climb up using the rocks and the guidance of our instructors. The knee padding came in very useful here as we were dragging ourselves up quite high falls. In between we were squeezing through tight tunnels and huddling in very small caves. The last waterfall took us out above ground, but we didn’t notice this until looking around for a few seconds and noticing the trees by the river and the stars in the sky!

After we were showered, dressed and warmed up we were treated to a bagel and a cup of soup. Overall the Black Water Rafting was a very good trip, it was an adventure full of banter, hard work, education and laughs.