Waitomo - 25.9

I've been hearing all those stories about the caves and all the fun things you can do in there, all the climbing and rafting and glowworms and so on. Everybody says this is the coolest thing in whole New Zealand and in the whole wide world in general. So I was getting all excited! Have gone through all the options, read about this and that, I've been thinking if I should do the half day or a full day trip and should I go to see the glowworms separately or not.

So, I get to Waitomo at 11:30. I get dropped off by the only booking office in this little village. I walk in and before I can really even say anything the lady behind the counter informs me that due to the rain in the past few days all the caves are flooded and trips have been cancelled. WHOOOTTT?!?!?! CANCELLED?!?!?!?! Argh. But she so pleasantly says that it all depends on the weather and perhaps I should come back in the afternoon to check the situation. There is nothing they can say about tomorrow as it depends on the weather. As I try to ask what time would the trips leave in the morning she keeps repeating the fact that the caves are flooded. Oh great. Finally I get the information out of her that the tours would not leave before 9am anyways.

Right, so I go and check-in to the hostel, I find the internet being nice and fast so I spend an hour or so behind the computer updating my travel log and photos. Trying to pass time, no going outside as it just keeps raining. Have started on putting the trip summary slides together already :( - sad face is because I'm realizing that at some point this trip will be ending :((( So finally the clock ticks closer to 2pm and I make my way to the booking office again.

I walk up to the same lady to acquire about water level situation - nope no change she says. Then she looks at me and goes, what were you interested in doing anyways? Oh so now you ask!?! This lady was not being very nice to me this whole time. So I tell her about my confusion about all those different trips and they all seem like the best thing since sliced bread. Then she goes and explains me how there are hundreds of caves (if I understood it correctly) and how there are many tour operators and they are mostly the same anyways. Lot of operators are doing combos, like all great X in one: 100m abseil (declining on a rope), climbing, walking, seeing glowworms etc. Advertising all sorts of different lengths of tours ranging from 45 minutes to 7h, lunch included or not, dry or wet - you choose and so on. VERY CONFUSING. So as it comes out not all of them include black water rafting and as it turns out, not all of the caves are flooded afterall!

After few calls to some operators she asks if I'm up to 3pm black water rafting trip :) Understanding that it is still raining outside I give thumbs up. 42 minutes later I've got my swimsuit and towel and I'm ready to go :) Group is only 4 people this time - which is so incredibly nice. We are given wetsuits, boots, belts and helmets. We get changed and head over to the caves by a minivan. Now getting to the caves is funny :) Minivan stops by this random field, we get off, open a gate and hike across a field full of cows (who try to attack us on our journey) making our way towards a hole in the ground - welcome to the cave :) 5 minute introduction and training follows and on we go. We are handed tubes (inner tires for floatation) and off we are :)

Now this thing is great! We go down the steps and enter the cave. Our guide gives us time to adjust to different light, he introduces the cave and gives bit of facts on history. We were down there for 1.5 hours and it went by in a snap! We get to jump off the edges and high rocks (he makes us do it back first), we are swimming in a 10m deep stream towards a slide, we slide down a 7m fall, he forms sorta train of us (you sit in a tube and a person in front holds on to your legs and you hold on to the legs of a person behind you) and we get to slide down the stream as he guides us in the dark, we see glowworms throughout the whole journey, we walk, we look at rock formations and bones. It is great. The whole thing is quite narrow so we bump off the walls as we straddle along. Water is also pretty cold - around 11C I'd say. And there are thousands and thousands of glowworms the whole way through. Apparently this is the longest stream there is in all the caves around here for black water rafting :) Anyways, it was pretty amazing :)

I have decided that I have had a pretty good chance to see the cave and do the rafting, I'm guessing the water level will not get much better tomorrow, so rest of the caving experiences need to wait till next time :) and most likely I'm heading back to Auckland tomorrow. Gotta see if I can convince the bus driver to take me on :D

If the bus driver won't let me go a day earlier then I can catch a ride with a couple from UK who moved to Canada a week ago :) They figured to take a 5 week trip while all their furniture is being shipped over by boat :), apparently it takes some weeks by boat. Met them in the evening after me and one of my roommates (who I met just the same evening) had finished dinner in the only pub in town :D There is nowhere else to go in this small place so all the locals and tourists were gathered there for dinner and drinks - so were we :) Later another guy from UK joined our discussion and the party continued :D Fun times!