Glow worms and waterfalls

We left Hot Water Beach on the bus at around 7:30am. We stopped at a supermarket around 9am and bought some food and drinks for the next couple of days. Then at around 10am we stopped at Karangahake gorge for a 50 walk along the river and through an old railway tunnel which was pretty nice.

We arrived at our accomdation around 2pm and checked in. It's another lodge type place, not on a holiday park this time though. We are in a 4 bedded room, all singles, no bunks which is nice. We're sharing with the girls from Leeds as well so everything is all good.

SO at 15:45 myself and Lauren went on a trip called 'Labyrinth' with the Legendary Black Water Rafting Company. It was a tubing and caving trip. We got picked up from our accommodation and taken to their centre, where we struggled into wet suits and boots and donned helmets before being driven to a little river with a wooden deck out over it. We were fitted for our black water rafts, which were basically giant rubber inflatable rings and then we had to test them. To do this we had to jump off backwards into the river. Lauren was chosen at the demonstrator and bravely went first. I didn't realise (and I don't think Lauren did) until she jumped in that you do actually go under the water. Beth, one of the guides, was counting to three and then you just had to jump. It took me about 3 counts before I actually had the courage to jump in and water went all up my nose. It was not pleasant.

There was to be two jumps like that in the caves, one about 5 and half feet and one similar to what we had just done. I really wanted to have the courage to do them  ut my brain doesn't know how to not breath and I know I would have just ended up choking and spluttering and it would not have been pleasant so instead I just climbed down the waterfalls, whilst everyone else jumped. I'm a bit disappointed in myself but I don't think I would have enjoyed it for I had almost drowned twice.

The rest of the trip was walking through the Ruakuri cave through the water and floating on the rings down the deeper bits. At two points we all linked up, by holding feet and turned off the lights on our helmets whilst Alex, another guide, dragged us through the caves. It was fantastic because the caves are home to glow worms, or rather glow maggots, and it almost looked like stars as we floated along. Apparently the shiny bits are glow maggot poo, which kind of makes it less cute.

The caves we were in were 210 feet below the surface and we walked about 900m through the caves, although it seemed like a lot further! The trip was super cool, apart from the waterfall bit for me, and we both enjoyed it a lot. 

Unfortunately I don't have any photos as we weren't allowed to take our own cameras (probably a good thing for safety reasons) and the photos weren't great.