Spelunking in the black abyss

On my second day in Rotorua I had booked a little excursion to Waitomi, an area filled with more than 300 limestone cave complexes carved out by water. When doing canyoning in Queenstown I met an american coulple that highly recommended a 5 hour guided tour of spelunking in the caves 65 meters below the surface, called the black abyss. So I was excited about this, but before crawling underground I had to endure a 2 hour shuttle ride that included an almost unstoppable commentary track by our driver that named and pointed everything on our way from haystacks to giant kiwi statues. Unfortunately for me the only other passengers were a couple of girls that fell asleep after 5 mins so I had to politely listen and come up the occasional comment...

Arriving, it turned out we were only 2 persons doing the Black Abyss, meaning we would have much more action time and less waiting. So it felt almost as a private tour when our 2 instructurs prepped us for the trip. Prior to departure we had the mandatory before picture taken, available for only 30$ when you had completed your tour... Sigh..

But off we went and the trip started with 35 meters of rapelling into the rabbit hole

Then it was a pitch black zip line tour only illuminated by tiny little ceiling lights, that ended in a crushing halt on a ledge above the underground river. Here we fuelled ourself up with hot chocolate and cake before plunging butt and rubber tube first into the darkness of the 8-9 degree cold water.

Following the river up stream the cave ceiling was illuminated by little blue and greenish lights from so called glowworms. Tiny llittle critters that are  actually maggots, attracting insects towards the cave ceiling using their illuminating body, where they get tangled in fishing lines and pulled to their deaths..

Reaching the end of the upstream river, we saddled up in out rubber tubes and started floating down stream. But before this our guide slammed the rubber tube hard against the water several times maling a deafening noise that traversed down the narrow tunnel. This noise apparently stresses the glow worms whick makes them glow even brighter. So it felt like floating beneath a starfilled sky.. My best comparison would be something taken out of a ride in Disneyland, except this was real..

It is really hard to get a decent picture of this phenomenon, so here is one from a postcard  

And one taken in the cave

After having floated down stream it was time to get dirty as we started crawling through small cracks in the cave that made you wriggle like a worm to make it through. 

Quite exciting when you started to think about the 65 meters of earth and rock above you and the rushing water in tunnels..

But after about 5 hours we emerged into the sunlight and a beautifull day that hadn't even really begun when we went underground. Big smiles all around and another highlight on my trip so far!