Black Water Rafting

On the weekend of the 7th and 8th of May I traveled from Tauranga to Waitomo to do Black Water Rafting (BWR) with six YP's from Auckland (www.blackwaterrafting.co.nz). Now BWR contains a variety of adventures, we completed the Black Abyss adventure, this starts with getting suited up with wetsuit, booties, harness, and a helmet(light attached). We then jumped into a van for a 5 min car journey to the entrance, once there we practiced abseiling down a bank to get the feel of it before jumping into the hole. The Abseil is about a 40m drop with the first part of the abseil seated until you get inside the cave entrance (which is fairly small and squishy), once inside the cave it is completely dark except for the light on your helmet, after spinning around so that I could face the wall I proceeded to jump down the face. Not knowing where the bottom was a really adrenaline pumping experience. So once down we walked for a bit along a grate like walkway which was located over a deep hole in the cave. At the end of the walkway was a Flying Fox, which we were sent down with no lights on at all, not knowing where you were going or what you were going to hit was really cool feeling which got the adrenaline pumping again. After a small break with hot coffee we jumped off a ledge with our tyre tubes into icy cold water and paddled up stream. After a while we turned around, turned the lights off and followed the millions of glow worms on the cave roof. Really beautiful, completely dark except for the electric blue glow worms and perfect silence. Once we got back to the ledge we lost the tubes and proceeded by foot which entailed a water slide, a rock climbing challenge and numerous small caves which were small and cozy to say the least. Towards the end we got a choice to walk out or climb out, so the climb out involved us climbing up two small water falls, unharnessed. Really good feeling of adventure and as we finished early we got to go for another small caving adventure which was really tight... After the BWR caving adventure we headed for our accommodation and proceeded to get pissed until the early hours of the morning. Really great weekend with plenty of action in and out of the caves...Highly recommended.