You’d be right – we didn’t enjoy it...well, maybe a little bit!
When I first came into Kz’s room and floated the suggestion, I’m not sure which part of the phrase ‘Black Water Rafting’ actually filled her with more horror – the thought of being in the pitch dark underground, or of being in rapidly flowing water, or being forced to rely on some kind of large rubber ring as your only means of support!
Let’s not forget that uncontrolled environments are not really Kz’s forte and she was struggling to think of an activity that had the potential to need more risk signs than this one – although the likelihood of being able to see the signs in the pitch dark was slim! And for those of you who know me, I’m not really good in the dark. Kz has never let me forget the fact that I once told her that, ‘I get scared closing my eyes as its too dark!’
Still, blithely reassured by Shianne and Laura, that they had done it before and it wasn’t that hard really, we headed on down to Waitomo Caves for our first, and most probably last, black water rafting experience (I'm beginning to think that all Kiwi girls have entirely different expectations as to what entails a difficult, challenging recreational activity in comparison to us British!)
We stayed the night at the appropriately named ‘Glow worm Motel’ and calmed our nerves by a lovely dinner at the Thirsty Weta pub (thankfully the only one we saw, despite being cheerfully told by a number of people that the caves were infested with them!), and a few games of Monopoly deal!
If we had known what was ahead of us the next day I'm not sure how cheerful we'd have been!
I think the smiles are hiding the nerves!
Somehow the boys were wearing 'small' wetsuits!!
After the leveling experience of desperately trying to squeeze into 14mm wetsuits with fleece tops underneath them (wetsuits are great levelers – I defy anyone to look good) it dawned on us that being 200 ft underground in water meant that it was actually going to be very cold… about 7 degrees in fact… the day was definitely not improving!
The intrepid group prepared for anything (and hoping we didn't end up like the one on the floor behind Jess!)
It was with some trepidation that Kz approached the edge of the dock – as you may know, she very rarely jumps into any body of water and has an intrinsic dislike of getting her hair wet – but she realized she didn’t have many other options open to her, especially as our guide had informed us that if we didn’t jump on the count of three then we might be given a motivating ‘helping hand’ in the form of a push! Much to our hilarity Kz managed to make the biggest splash of the whole group and came up spluttering, unable to see because her contact lenses had dislodged but still clutching her rubber ring! The joke was on me though as I was laughing so hard at her that I managed to forget to jump and more fell back into the water, hitting the river sideways, coming off my ring and lost my shoe in the process! (losing shoes in rivers seems to be a developing trend for me – see earlier evidence from our tramping weekend!)
Fortified by the knowledge, that we had overcome the first hurdle relatively unscathed we ventured down into the heart of the cave. This involved entering down a number of natural stone steps and then squeezing and sliding through a crack in the rock into the cavern below.
Perched in our rubber rings, we experienced a number of challenges as we negotiated the underground caverns. Our experiences in the river outside, had stood us in good stead to take a leap of faith and jump backwards into the dark over the two waterfalls we had to negotiate – believe me, it’s harder than you imagine, positioning your feet, holding your rubber ring and trying not to be swept backwards by the rapids before you were ready! Still, by the last one, we’d all mastered the technique – except for Colin, who when they said, ‘don’t jump to the left, you’ll be sucked into the big black hole beneath’ managed to demonstrate perfectly what the rest of us were to avoid doing!
One of the most amazing bits of the trip was all lying in what they called an eel position, all joined together and floating along serenely (apart from Kz’s running commentary about how she was feeling and re-enacting scenes from Titanic…Jaaaackkk, come baaacckkkk) looking up at the glowworms, which looked exactly like you were looking up at the night sky – until they then pointed out that glow worms are actually the maggots of the fungus gnat (a bit like a mosquito). Then you spent the rest of the time hoping that they wouldn’t fall on you!
This all led us into a marvelous false sense of security as the next thing we had to do was negotiate a thin corridor of rapids on our own, in our tubes! This was when disaster struck! I managed to get myself flipped out of my tube and dislocate my shoulder at the same time so was floundering around in the water until I got grabbed by the guide at the other end!
Fortunately I managed to put my shoulder in ok and it stayed where it should have, for about the next 10 minutes, when we got asked to turn all our lights off and float our way out of the caves, not being allowed to put our lights on again unless it was an absolute emergency!
Now being british, and very polite, this led to me putting my hand up in the dark (why?!) to ask if I was allowed to put my light on as I’d dislocated my shoulder again but didn’t want to make a fuss! Unfortunately, this time it really didn’t want to go back in and so I got pushed out of the cave into the light so that I could finally get it manipulated back in!
So, slightly battered, very wet and freezing cold we ended our black water rafting experience, thrilled we had done it but vowing never ever to do it again, and re-living our experiences over hot soup and a bagel!
And KZ found a new friend in the gift shop to remember the experience by...
