It was an early wake
for everyone since it was cave day! Ryan
R was up the earliest, though, and managed to make a really nice fruit platter
for breakfast. We ate, put on our bathing
suits, and walked across the street to the cave tour building.
The tour was with
The Legendary Black Water Rafting Co. and we did the Black Labyrinth tour. It was a 3 hour tour, with 1.5 hours in the
cave, tubing through the underground river looking at glow worms. The tour desk mentioned that we would have to
jump off of a short waterfall (1.5m), but that didn't seem to register with any
of us. So at 8:15am, the adventure
began! (We weren't allowed to bring cameras, so my vivid descriptions will have
to do).
There were 11 people
on the tour all together with 2 guides.
We all got dressed in freezing cold (pre-moistened) wetsuits, booties, rubber boots, and
helmets, then we piled into a van to drive to the training area. The tour guides were two young guys who were
pretty friendly and entertaining. They
did a good job. The training area was a
river with an elevated dock, and a big pile of tubes. We all picked a tube, did some funny poses
for the camera, and got a brief lesson.
I think it was only then that we clued in that we were doing a waterfall
jump, and that's also when we remembered that Ryan R isn't the most comfortable
swimmer. Kat got voluntold to be the
first person to demonstrate, and she had to jump backwards off of the dock in
her tube, into the nice calm (but freezing cold) river. Even for me, who is an excellent swimmer, it
was freaky to jump into an unknown river backwards. But we all survived, and then we were back in
the van heading to the cave.
We were all quite
surprised how technical (read frightening) the tour was. For a "beginner" tour there was
lots of walking through rapids on slippery rocks, squeezing through small
spaces, and even one spot where you only had a small area of air between the
water and the top of the cave to squeeze through. The current was quite fast in some places, so
you had to be really careful where you stepped.
And though the waterfall jumps weren't high, you had to stand in fast
rapids, in a small space, with jagged rocks all around you, in the dark, and
hope that you landed in the right place.
At one point the guides sent us through these rapids, one at a
time. Kat got a funny push, then almost
tipped over her tube, and cut her hand on the rocks. About half way through the tour we all
stopped and huddled in one passage way while the guides passed around this
container full of gross chocolate marshmallow snacks. That was the spot where you could see the
glow worms sort of close, so we stayed there for awhile to check them out. Little did we know they were just buttering
us up before the last waterfall jump!
After the last jump,
we all linked arms and legs and floated down the calm river with our lamps
off. Have I mentioned before that I
really don't like the dark? It's fine in
a house or something, but seriously, in a cave, in the water?! Not my favourite thing. Luckily I was attached to Kat who made me
feel better. Awhile later our line broke
up and we could float by ourselves for the rest of the way. Ryan P and Kat played bumper tubes, while
Ryan R and I joined forces. He didn't like
the water, and I didn't like the dark, so we made a good team. At one point we floated by Ryan P, who was
just floating in a corner by himself.
We're not exactly sure why he was there, but I guess he got stuck or
something. I'm glad we were there to
rescue him or else who knows what could have happened!
Finally we reached
daylight again, and we were driven back to the tour building for some much
needed hot showers and lukewarm tomato soup.
The guides had been taking pictures the whole time, so we watched that
slide show before we left. The pictures
were pretty bad, but I managed to get some pretty silly faces in when I knew
they were snapping a shot. Overall I
think we enjoyed the tour, but it really wasn't what we were expecting. I would say it probably wasn't my thing, but
I'm glad I did it.
Back at the campsite
we packed up our stuff, played a puzzle game in the hostel common room, and
eventually left to continue our day.
That part of the
drive was very familiar New Zealand landscape with rolling hills and sheep
everywhere, so we decided to do our first photo contest. We did a few throughout the trip that were
very well documented, but we never did pick a winner.
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| Photo Credit: Kat |
Our next stop was a
really cool black sand beach near Mokau.
The sand was from the nearby volcano, and it was really heavy thus
impressing the geologists. There was
lots of beautiful driftwood, which of course meant we needed to do an epic
battle photo shoot for what felt like an hour.
It was a really cool spot to stop!
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| Photo Credit: Kat |
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| Photo Credit: Kat |
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| Photo Credit: Ryan P |
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| The sand was magnetic, and of course Ryan P had a scribe with him to test it! Photo Credit: Ryan P |
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| Photo Credit: Ryan R |
And then we passed this interesting roadside lookout...
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| Photo Credit: Kat |
Nearing the end of
the day we pitched our tents at a campsite in New Plymouth. We were hoping to get to see the Mt. Taranaki
volcano, but it was too stormy and cloudy to see that evening. Our fingers were crossed that we would see it
in the morning though, so we picked a campground with a good potential
view. That meant that the campsite was
right on the water, which was pretty but extremely windy. Ryan and I were confident in our tent, since
it's been through some pretty rough weather, but Kat and Ryan were using a new
tent so they weren't sure how it would hold up. That night's storm was the perfect test, and in the end it was a
success.
After some delicious
curry, we settled in for an evening of board games, lots of wine, blue cheese
and strawberries, and in bed at 11:30pm.
