Waitomo Caves and The Whanganui River

I am in Queenstown now, but before we get to that I wanted to continue telling you all about the rest of our holiday.

When I left off last time, I mentioned zorbing and the coromandel peninsula. After we left Hamilton, we drove to Waitomo which is famous for its many caves and the glow worms that live in the caves.

In order to see the glowworms, you can either take a short guided walk that leads to you an indoor overlook OR you can put on a wetsuit, jump off a waterfall and black water raft your way through the caves. Eoin and I chose the latter. Here we are in our awesome wetsuits, gum boots, and helmets.

Look how excited we are!

We had a brief training on how to jump off waterfalls (butt-first) and the proper way to carry our inner-tubes (over your right shoulder) and how to eel (sitting in a line holding onto the person's feet behind you).

Here is what it looks like to eel..


After our training, we rode up to the top of a hill and walked into the beginning of the cave. It was very dark and wet so the lights on our helmets came in handy as we tried to find our footing in the caves. For the most part, we were walking in ankle deep water or floating along the river occasionally bumping into rocky walls or other people. The glow worms looked like stars in the sky, but in actuality we were looking at maggot poo. Gross?

There were two waterfall jumps, one was about 3 feet high and the other about 5. We had to walk to the edge of the cliff, turn around, and jump backwards in our inner tubes. It was actually a lot of fun. Towards the end, we got further from the "rapids" and had to paddle ourselves with our hands. Not unsurprisingly, I was the last one out of the cave. No matter how hard I paddled I kept going in circles and bumping into the walls, so one of the guides simply pulled me the last part of the way. Embarrassing.

We got complimentary hot showers along with bagels and soup when we got back to the main building. Amazinggggg.




After we ate and warmed up a bit Eoin and I headed out to Taumarunui, a small town known for absolutely nothing. This is the town where our canoe trip started. We had one night to relax a bit and back up our four blue barrels with the supplies we'd need on our trip (rain gear, pjs, mess kit, food, sunscreen, polypro, socks, sleeping bags and a tent). Early the next morning we headed to the Canoe rental place, which happened to be a family's home, and they were some of the nicest people! They gave us some insight on what to expect on our canoe journey and how to handle to RAPIDS we would encounter. Eoin and I set off a bit before another couple that was also there, but they had never canoed before and needed more training than we did.

We canoed for about 5 hours our first day, and went approximately 51 KM. There were 45 rapids (up to level 3's) before we got to the first campsite, but we didn't stop until the second campsite (about 20 more rapids away). We never capsized, although we definitely came close once! The rapids were a lot of fun, even if we occasionally went through them sideways or backwards :)






Our canoe at the campsite. Some rapids can be seen in the background. Those are the rapids that almost tipped us over.

We put our tent together, and put on our pajamas before making some dinner. Eoin had collected some fire wood and leaves and whatnot, and we attempted to make a fire. However, it would not stay aflame without someone constantly tending to it, so it wasn't the best campfire ever, but it was nice and warm :)

We went to bed pretty early because we had to get back in the water by 9 AM. My arms hurt so bad from all the paddling, and my hands and wrists were sunburned too. But we managed to sleep alright. We got up earlier than planned, and got back into our canoe by 8:30 AM. We made it to the end of our journey much earlier than the 2:00PM van would be there to pick us up. So we pulled our boat ashore and walked around Whakahoro (pronounced quite vulgarly, fuk-a-hor-oh) while we waiting for our ride.
One of the many waterfalls along the Whanganui River.

This is quite a long blog, so I think I will write about Queenstown in my next entry. But just know that I am having a blast!

:)