Black Water Rafting

Today we headed to Waitamo Caves and a chance to experience some black water rafting. This involves getting kitted up in wet suits, boots and helmets and a bit of abseiling practice and then heading up to the caves and the start of our adventure. The first thing we do is abseil down into the cave, a 37m drop down, luckily I can't see down and once I loose the light from the surface, only have an head lamp to look straight ahead and not down!!

Once at the bottom we then have a short walk we are then attached to a flying fox and whizz down in the pitch black - we had to scream at this point !! After all that excitement we have a hot chocolate and cookie then it's off again. The next bit involved the inner tubes and jumping off a 4m ledge with the inner tube held behind you and try and land in it on the water. Now I am not ashamed to say I was pretty apprehensive at doing this bit (?!) but eventually I plucked up the courage and off I went!!

The next part is floating along leisurely in the inner tube in the dark and admiring the glow worms in the cave. Then it's off again and we are walking through the water and climbing up and over the rocks and then it's time for climbing up the waterfall which is pretty hairy and hard work, and then it's up another one (but not quite so hard to climb up) and then its the last scramble up some more tunnels and daylight appears above us and we are out!