We
started out the day with a breakfast cooked by John, our host with his wife
Helen at the Abseil Inn in Waitomo. For
any of you coming this way, we
strongly recommend it! After making arrangements to head on up to
Auckland in the evening and packing up, we went to see the Angora rabbits at the
shearing shed. These big fluff balls were great to hold! It's too
bad we didn't have time to check out the shearing of the little guys
(they were so hot that they were aching to get their fur off), but we had
a caving adventure awaiting us!!
We went to the local museum and got the scoop on glow worms, caves and the
region. Waitomo is a beautiful town set among rolling hills and great
vistas. The area is really known for the caves underneath though. We
came prepared to take full advantage of it.
We started out on our Black Water Rafting Black Abyss tour getting decked out
in 5 mm wet suits and caving b
oots and helmets. We chatted with our cave
guides, Tim and Regan, and meeting our other fellow cavers. We abseiled
down into the cave through a narrow crack. We saw fossils and glow worms
up close followed by a brief hike and a zip line across a dark void. After a
brief snack, we jumped off an 8 foot ledge into the underground river. Owww -
butt flop. We floated down the river in the dark on inner tubes with the glow
worms lighting our way. We then spent another hour exploring the caves and
hiking through the underground river.
We had our faces painted by our fellow rafters in the traditional Maori
fashion using the dark limestone of the caves as our paint, and then climbed up
some waterfalls to get back into the light. It was a great adventure!
After that adrenaline rush, a shower and a bagel, we drove for about 3 hours to
Auckland and checked into the Hyatt.
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We
started out the day with a breakfast cooked by John, our host with his wife
Helen at the Abseil Inn in Waitomo. For
any of you coming this way, we
strongly recommend it! After making arrangements to head on up to
Auckland in the evening and packing up, we went to see the Angora rabbits at the
shearing shed. These big fluff balls were great to hold! It's too
bad we didn't have time to check out the shearing of the little guys
(they were so hot that they were aching to get their fur off), but we had
a caving adventure awaiting us!!
