Black Water Rafting

The adventure part of our trip started today! We booked a five-hour black water rafting trip, called the Black Abyss. What’s black water rafting? Basically you float in an inner tube down an underground river through Ruakuri Cave. What’s so adventurous about that? For starters, we repelled 30m (90ft) through a small, dark hole to get underground. Once underground, we zip-lined in the dark into a cave full of glowworms (very cool!). After a short break and snack of hot tea and cave cookies, we jumped off of a 20 foot ledge into the ice-cold river to begin our float down a long, glowworm-covered passage. Floating and looking up at the glowworms was like stargazing. Mother Nature is really impressive. After the tranquility of the glowworms, it was time for more adventure -- walking / crawling / swimming through the cave, sliding down a slide (face first), and climbing up a few waterfalls to get back above ground. We had a great time and came out with only a few minor scrapes. Our guides, Hop and Shannon, were awesome!