Thursday, July 19, 2012

Underground river cave rafting!

This was quite possibly one of the craziest things ive ever done

We left our lovely cabin in Rotorua early in the morning to drive 2ish hours to Waitomo. It's a small town in New Zealand that is famous around the world for one thing-their caves!

It's the only place in the world that has just the right climate to be home to a million glowing worm. We later found out they're more like larva but still, so random! All I knew about our activity for the day is that 1. the company was called black water rafting and 2. We were going I see these glowing worms. Keep in mind it's freezing in New Zealand right now!

We arrive at the place and are lead down to be suited up! We put on a full wetsuit, a thick long sleeve, a wetsuit jacket, booties and then rubber boots. We all were already frozen before we even headed down to the caves. (I still don't know what to expect, like at all). We drive down, fully dressed/fully restricted and pick up black inner tubes. Then we're told to get back in the car with our tubes.

We drive more, park, and begin trekking it down the rainforest (inner tubes in hand). We see this itty bitty opening to a cave and river water flowing into it. We individually crawl down and get into the river. The guides send us one at a time into this cave, butts in the tube. We are then told to flatten out...we are floating far down into this cave and the ceiling/the top part of the cave (that takes a year to grow an inch) is maybe two feet from the water. We are floating down a river into this cave and I'm literally laying flat in my tube and having to follow the ceiling with my hands so I know I'll have air to breath. Finally it lets out and we are now 200 feet below ground. The river is rushing, rocks are obviously everywhere and i can only see because of the head lamp on my helmet.

I was in shock at the intensity of this and totally loving it. As a group, we all were freaking out. It was honestly nuts! We reached our first water fall and our guide casually tells us we are going to jump down, backwards, land in our tubes and keep floating until you link with the rest of the group at the bottom. Bombs away! A jumped off and was enveloped by the wave I caused jumping with the tube. The water was 5 degrees celsius. I'm not entirely sure how cold that is in fahrenheit but all I know it was dang cold! A kind of cold I've never really felt before, I felt like jack in titanic! Anyways, away we floated down the cave! Some parts you had to stand and walk cause it was too shallow and in other parts it was hundreds of meters deep.

We jumped down our second water fall that was higher than the last and formed a giant "eel" at the bottom. We faced backwards in our tubes and were all linked, foot to armpit. We turned off our lights and floated backwards down the cave, looking up was little glowing green specs covering all the cave! It reminded me of what the sky looked like in the outback, yet these were glowing worms and not stars and planets. It was magical!

We looked up and saw a tiny little dot of light that water was coming down like rain...that tiny dot was where the surface was! It was chilling; figuratively and literally. I was frozen because of the temperature and in disbelief I was so freaking far from the surface! We sang Disney songs, well, screamed Disney songs through out the cave. It was such a moment!

The cave rafting tour took three hours. I can honestly say that in those three hours, I had one of the most epic experiences in my life! There is no other way to describe the ridiculousness of it, you just have to experience it for yourself. We were treated with a warm shower and hot
soup after. It look an hour or so to regain feeling in my extremities but regardless, an unforgettable experience!

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