Waitomo

Sunday 22^nd January 2012

We set off at 7am and headed to Waitomo for the Black Water Rafting and search for Glowworms.  Quite an early start but the bus ride is a couple of hours so get the chance to have a quick sleep before heading 65 feet underground, eeeek….!!

I don’t think I really thought about what this activity would entail! When wet suited up and driven to the start of the caves we find a black rubber ring that would fit us and then told to jump backwards off a ledge into the water as once in the caves we will be doing this but off waterfalls…..!!! No matter how many water activities I have done over the last 8 weeks I have still not conquered my fear of water, so jumping backwards into a river was pretty scary for me, however I still did it!

We then head into the caves…..

I felt quite nervous on this activity, I even said it was scarier than the skydive…..! Such a whimp I know ;-) The caves were dark, wet and cold (oh and my head lamp didn’t work, so I had to stick close to Nella and Helen so I could see where I was stepping!).  But after the first jump off a waterfall we all float down the caves and are told to turn our head lamps off and look up! It was so pretty, all the glowworms, or rather their secretion (!!), was so bright and just looked like stars twinkling away! Not at all what I expected J and totally worth all my worrying!

We meander through the rest of the caves, walking and floating and keeping our eyes out for more sparkly glowworms.

The caves themselves were also very impressive and when I was calm and just floating along it was another fab experience to add to Ruthy’s travels!!

When out the caves we warmed up with some soup and then just had a wander in the town before heading to Rotorua.  My second to last stop before home L