Today started off with some unneeded frustration. Apparently the well-known Seinfeld episode of “you know how to take a reservation, you just don’t know how to hold a reservation” is rather true for a car hire company over here called Jucy.
We’d booked a tarago for 3 days, credit card given but apparently that doesn’t mean a car will be available. The guy behind the desk didn’t seem worried or that it was unusual.
Thankfully a car mob next door could help us out.
From auckland we drove to waitomo to go black water rafting. After suiting up in full wetsuit gear, we headed down to near the caves.
We started by doing a practice jump off a small jetty – backwards from a metre into the water whilst having a truck inner tube as our seat.
To say the water was cold is like saying there’s a few sheep around the place. We then made our way up to the caves where it’s a mixture of walking through the pitch black caves, climbing and floating on the inner tubes.
We had our helmets with lights on to see our way but half way into it, the cave roof is illuminated by glow worms. This plus the stallicmites (spelling?), small rapids and some more leaps of faith made for an awesome experience – all whilst underground.
From there we drove to rotorua where we are now. Had a very nice dinner and working out what we’re doing tomorrow. At this stage it’s looking like white water rafting, zorbing or perhaps a swoop.
