Black Water Rafting

Today we went caving with the Black Water Rafting Co on the Black Abyss tour. Kitted out in wetsuits, climbing harness, helmet and ridiculous shorts (cos the rest of the outfit was fine?) we were driven to a hole in the ground. After a brief reminder of abseiling above ground we descended one by one 37m into the blackness. I think it would have helped if I had turned my head torch on. 37m sounds like quite a long way, but I was just getting used to abseiling when suddenly I was at the bottom.  Once we were all in the cave we walked into a thin passage and then all queued for the next section. By the screams silenced by a banging sound I guessed we weren’t walking it.  As it turned out it was a flying fox over the underwater stream that we were about to raft landing on a ledge on the opposite side of the largest section of the cave. After whizzing down the fox in pitch black there was a warm drink before we were issued with large inner tubes. How do you get to the water a few metres below? Stupid question, you jump. Landing in sitting position with the inner tube under you gets you successfully wedged you into the ideal rafting position. We worked our way upstream paddling deeper into the caves. After travelling a distance into the caves our guide got us to join together into a tube chain and to put out our lights. We were pulled back downstream through the cave in the pitch black to admire the glow worms illuminating the cave ceilings. When we got back to where we’d jumped in we abandoned the tubes, ready to be collected by the next group who we could already hear abseiling in. We had to swim, walk and float through the progressively smaller caves. One section we had to float through on your back with your nose scraping the ceiling (well you would if you had a very long nose). To leave the caves we had two options; the so called “Stairway to Heaven” or “The Gates of Hell”. For some reason we all opted for The Gates of Hell route. This comprised of wriggling and scrambling up three stages of a waterfall with rest points only just large enough for four people at a time. This was probably the closest to real caving of the whole trip. A warm shower, bagel and hot soup waited for us on return to the base, a pleasant end to a superb morning.
The afternoon we went to the museum of caving in Waitomo before setting off for Rotorua. On the way we stopped off at a bird sanctuary to view some Kiwis before arriving at the egg smell town (sulphur from the hot springs)