Day 17 - Wednesday, February 8
Got up early and headed from hot water beach over to Waitomo, home of the gloworm caves and black water rafting, which isn't really rafting so much as it is tubing. Along the way we stopped and did a hike through Karangahake Gorge, which was home to an old gold mine, so the hike included walking through some old mine tunnels and such, which was pretty neat.
At Waitomo, we had the choice of (1) walking down into the caves, (2) tubing through the caves, or (3) repelling down into the caves, ziplining in the pitch black down through caves, tubing through the caves, swimming and walking our way through the caves, and then finally climbing up through underground waterfalls to get out of the caves, each option a little longer and more expensive than the previous. I opted for the latter, which was about a 4 hour excursion and other than the water being frigid, and the wetsuits not getting the job done, it was a ton of fun, especially the last part, climbing up through the falls, which was kind of combination of rock climbing and playing in waterfalls. The gloworms were really cool too. It was very much like looking up on a clear night with a sky filled with stars. Given the nature of the activity, a camera wasn't possible to take down into the caves, but here's one all geared up before we headed down into the caves:
The
Black Water Rafting website has some good photos as well. If you look at the website, the excursion I did is called "the black abyss." And here's a photo of the gloworms I stole from the internet:
No comments:
Post a Comment