Bonjour-Mundo!

So, upon deciding to come to New Zealand I knew I was going to have to go white water rafting. From previous experiences in Ecuador, I love rafting. However, it’s winter in NZ, this makes most rafting endevours rather difficult.

In Rotorua though, we did manage to find a river being run…it also happened to be the river with the worlds highest commercially rafted waterfall. Kaituna Cascades. All excited we called the rafting company right away, but we couldn’t go for a few days because the river was flooded.

 Finally, a few days later, they let us on the river. We were picked up, and then they suited us up in fleeces, wetsuits, booties, helmets, and life-jackets. Then we headed out. We knew beforehand that it was going to be short, but I guess I didn’t realize it would be this short. The actual rafting part was probably about 40 minutes or so. Going over the waterfalls was really a good time, definitely exhilerating, but somehow they actually weren’t as big as I thought they would be. There also weren’t many rapids at all if you didn’t count the falls, I was a little dissppointed by that. I expected a little more from New Zealand!

Also, just fyi, it’s really freaking cold when you raft in the winter. Our guides thought it would be super fun to do what they called “river surfing”. This involved putting someone in the front of the boat and then paddling towards a fall\rapid so the front of the boat would get pulled by the water and a big wave would fall over the boat. This, when it’s 80 degrees might be fun, however, mostly it just made me really crabby when the weather is so cold you can almost see your breath. I don’t mind getting wet going over rapids, but just getting wet for the sake of being wet, not my idea of fun.

However, the black water experience was MUCH cooler! Although we originally wanted to go black water rafting, due to budget constraints, we opted just for a normal tour. So, black water you say? Yep, well sort of. In an area called Waitomo, about 2 hours southwest of Rotorua, there are heaps and heaps of caves.  Lots of these caves involve glow worms, and that’s what we came to see.

We got on a bus from Rotorua early in the morning and they took us out to the little village. A quirky woman named Katie picked us up for our tour the “spellbound”. Good times. It was about a half hour drive through beautiful New Zealand countryside. We arrived at the first cave and it was all a walking tour. The cave is called “Cave of the Spirit” due to the cold winds that are known to blow through it. Not as exciting as the caves we saw in Hungary, but cool nonetheless. Then came the black water.

After some tea and biscuits (cookies for non-kiwis), we walked to the wet cave. We followed a bridge over a river into the cave and then walked down a bit to observe the glow-worms in the light. Basically, just like little tiny worms. The glow worms craft these elegant silk strings that waft down from the ceiling of the caves which they use to catch their food. After getting our fill of glow worms in the light, time to hit the lights.

We crowded onto a river rafting boat, and our guide flicked the switch to bring the cave to pitch black. Using a rope to guide our little craft she brought us down the river. What we saw above our heads was amazing. Thousands and thousands of glow worms, each with it’s own little blue-green light. It was as if another galaxy of stars was shining down from inside the cave. I have never seen anything like it. Although there were no rapids, it was a relaxing ride, I was left very impressed and amazed. Sometimes you don’t always need the adrenaline.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Monday, June 19th, 2006 at 9:08 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.