On Friday, February 24, I spent four hours driving to Waitomo, but I arrived slightly too late for the last caves tour of the day. As I’d joined the YHA in Whitianga, it made sense to stay at the YHA hostel, which was just across the road from the Legendary Black Water Rafting Company. There wasn’t much else nearby. I had to drive 15km to the nearest supermarket so I could buy some dinner (as I’d progressed from McDonalds/fish and chips to microwave meals). The hostel’s outdoor swimming pool looked less inviting than the sea and its trampoline looked like a death trap, but there were plenty of people around for a chat.
The next day, I did the three-hour Black Labyrinth tour of Ruakuri Cave. There were about a dozen people in my group, including a couple from Devon, and we all put on wetsuits and piled into a minibus with our guides Jess and AK. We were taken to a small river where we each selected an appropriately-sized tube and practised jumping backwards off a ledge with it, as there were a couple of waterfalls in the cave.
Then we went to the cave, and AK sang the Indiana Jones theme tune as we switched on our headlamps and descended into the darkness. Of course, the ground was uneven and the water ranged from ankle deep to neck deep. When it was deep enough, we sat in our tubes and let the river carry us. It felt like a theme park attraction, only better because it was natural.
The highlight was when we switched our lights off and rode our tubes slowly through a cave where the roof was covered with glow-worms, lit up like a starry sky. It was magical. AK started to sing My Heart Will Go On from Titanic, but Jess told her: “Don’t sing that! It’s about a bunch of people dying in cold water!”
We warmed up afterwards with soup and a bagel, and I was left reflecting on what an incredible three hours it had been. I’d nearly given Waitomo a miss as it’s so far out of the way, but I think this will go down as one of the best days of my whole trip.
*I was kindly given a CD of photos from the day, but I haven’t been able to add these to the website yet because I’m using a netbook and it doesn’t have a CD drive.