Travelling the North Island: Wellington to Auckland part 2

Waitomo Caves Blackwater Rafting... these pictures we provided for us at the end of the trip. We paid I think 20 NZD between the 3 of us. Not bad.
Me practicing my waterfall jump above ground. Hahaha
A silly picture
Another silly picture.

When I last left off as we were heading from Rotorua to Hamilton. Our first "stop" on our way to Hamilton was actually really out of the way. We took a sort of off the beaten path road that dipped back down south rather than up north toward Hamilton in order to go to Waitomo for Blackwater Rafting! Blackwater Rafting at the Waitomo Caves, as Chris and I actually found out yesterday, is all over lonely planet (the travel book guide) as a must do travel item, so we felt confident crossing that off our bucket list. Blackwater Rafting is essentially exploring a cave with a underground river flowing through it. The way you do this is by putting on some wetsuits, get some black innertubes, a helmet with a light on it, and go exploring! We had two guides who were very cool named Vashti and Jae. The process of getting fitted for these wetsuits was not fun and slightly awkward. They were still wet from their previous go in the caves and they were quite heavy. So, imagine, putting on a skin tight wet and cold heavy piece of clothing in a changing room with women who are much larger than you. I struggled a little but managed okay and once the wetsuit was on, it warmed a little so it wasn't too bad. However, the other women in the changing room struggled to an extent that one of them almost gave up. I would have offered to help, but I didn't really know how I could have helped.
We were transported (after taking some goofy photos) to the location of the caves. We first made a stop at a little location to practice jumping backwards off a waterfall above ground. We improvised on a dock type thing jumping into a river that actually was flowing in and out of the caves. The water was shockingly cold and made me worry about what it would be like in the caves.
Then they gave us silly instructions on how we would "paddle" and link together to form an "eel" of tubes. Then we climbed down. We did a little team bonding within the cave itself with everyone telling one thing true about themself and one thing false. The best one someone came up with was, "I have three children and this kid sitting next to me is my son." Turns out the kid next to him wasn't his son. Haha. Not as funny on paper, but it was pretty funny to hear when we were sitting in a dark leaky cave about to embark on a crazy undergound adventure.
Then we were told to start walking and exploring. We wandered through the cave, slightly guided by our two fearless leaders and slightly guided by the walls of the cave (as there really weren't many options to wander off to. Our first experience with the cold underground water was floating under a really low lying ceiling.
At this point my feet were extremely cold as were my hands. I was really hoping my body would generate enough heat to keep at least my upper body warm but that too was starting to get cold. We came to our first underground waterfall. I was pretty scared, but when it came my turn I just went into a zone and did it without really thinking about it. After that, I wasn't really afraid of the darkness of the cave or the uncertainty of jumping backwards off a cave waterfall. We walked quite a distance, saw a really high up opening in the cave (with a slight glimmer of light). They made us do silly warming up exercises and then continued to march on. We came to the second waterfall and sat down for a little before jumping. Vashti showed me a cave eel, which was pretty cool. They asked us to tell a joke or an embarassing story. Everyone was awkwardly silent and of course Brian spoke up. He explained that when he was little he saw a documentary about bungee jumping. He wanted to try it so he got a regular rope (as most people know, you need a special cord), tied it to his playground set and to his pants and jumped. Needless to say, it didn't work. Haha.
The second waterfall was much higher up and came with a bit of a disclaimer. They showed us a pool of water swirling about right near the edge of the waterfall that didn't look particularly remarkable. However, Jae and Vashti had us turn our lights out and Vashti left hers on and she walked toward the pool and into it and suddenly disappeared. We watched as her light vanished and we were cloaked in blackness. Jae shouted for her and far off we hear her response as we see a faint light coming toward us. Once she got back they explained the situation. The pool of water was no pool of water but instead a huge hole type thing that actually dumped a large amount of water down by the waterfall. Terrifying. So we carefully edged around it toward the actual waterfall and jumped.
We were then told to link legs into the "eel" formation. We linked, I think I was somewhere in the middle with Chris behind me and we turned off our lights in order to see glow worms. Vashti pulled us through the river and we saw a pathway of the river lit on the ceiling of the cave by glowworms. Jae joked that we should sing a song so the group together sang "In the Jungle." Once that was done, Jae sang us the Maori national anthem. It was haunting and beautiful and suddenly the experience went for lighthearted to deep and mournful almost.
After that there was a small bit more of treking through the cave until we got to the end. Jae stood in front of us and instructed us that we would find out way our without our headlights, floating on our innertubes. So we all turned out our lights and started "paddling", mostly pushing off one another and off cave walls, toward a tiny sliver of light ahead of us. It was really fun, although I'm pretty sure I kicked a man I didn't know in the face. Haha. (Not hard!). We kept moving and kept paddling, but there came a point when it seemed like we weren't moving at all and that the light wasn't coming any closer. We kept hitting our hands on the sharp walls and it felt like we'd never make it out but then the light got brigher and the mouth of the cave opened up to a jungle and we were free! Chris managed to nick his hand on the caves but overall we were cold, wet, and happy.
Overall the trip was a 3 hour excursion with about an hour and 1/2. After the caves we were pretty exhausted and we had originially had plans to stop in Raglan (one of the best surfing spots in NZ) but we instead decided to take a short walk around and saw some natural caves in
the area that we could walk through and then drove to Hamilton.
At Hamilton we stayed at this nice hostel that was on the outskirts of town. It was run by a nice woman and it was more of a house than a hostel. I had a room that was "girls only" but I was the only one in there so it was really nice.
It was Easter so we wanted to eat somewhere fairly nice (whatever was open really) and we were recommended a bar about a 15 minute walk from our hostel. However when we got there they turned us away because we didn't have proper id (we had our drivers licenses but not our passports, which are required in NZ for foreigners ... so stupid.) When we said we wouldn't dirnk we just wanted to eat, they still denied us. SO we were really angry but walked all the way back, got the car and came back because it was really the only nice place in town to eat at.
Once we got back we settled in and then Chris and I spent the night watching "The Running Man" (haha) with a group of Irish girls.

Unfortunately I do not have time to finish this entry, so I will leave you yet again, still not having arrived in Samoa. The next installment should hopefully involve part of my time in Samoa.