Waitomo - Caving District

Today was Justins birthday so we bought him and inflatable sheep and a t-shirt which he was really pleased with! Waitomo is the caving central on NZ so we wanted to all go in the caves especially as it was Justins bday. I managed to find one trip which lasted 5 hrs costing $99 and included abseiling, Caving, Blackwater Rafting, Glowworms, and Rockclimbing so sounded like a bargain compared to the other prices I had seen that included the same things. By the time we got to our hostel in Waitomo in was about 2 so we had a hour before we were getting picked up to go off caving.

When we got to the Caving place we got kitted out in wet suits, helmets with torches and wellies! The first part began with a 27-metre abseil into a huge chasm which was a really awesome decent into the stream below. Once everyone was down we made our way upstream and went through what was called mud cave, where everything was mud - the walls, the floor which you started to sink into it was quite messy but fun. We then got some rafts/tubes and floated down the river to a 400sq metre cavern where we turned off our lights and witnessed a glowwrom display that was absolutely amazing. We then went and made our way through some really tight caves and squeezed our way out to the other side and then made our way down a really steep drop by using our backs and knees to slide down the walls. We then took another blackwater rafting trip downstream floatinf through covaerns filed with more glowworms until we got back to where we began and had the final challenege on a 20 metre rock climb back to the rest of the world which was actaully quite a challenege but we all made it back up in one piece. It was definately the best activity I have done so far and well worth the money!!