Part of my birthday present from Anna and her parents was the promise that we'd go black water rafting when in NZ.

Having driven west from Rotorua (not very nice) yesterday afternoon we arrived at Waitomo (pronounced why-tuo-mo) at lunchtime today. In Maori this translates as water hole and is apt as there are 300+ caves in the area. There is also a bewildering array of different tours and operators. Luckily the young lady at the iSite (tourist info) was very helpful and we chose the Tube It tour.

We meet our guide Sam who was very friendly and enthusiastic and put on our already damp wet suits and boots, which is such a delightful sensation. There was a short drive in a battered old van then a short walk over green fields to the cave entrance. We picked up an inflated truck inner tube, had some pre-requisite 'before' photos and headed underground.

Initially we walked through some dry passages. We stopped and turned our lights off to look at the glow worms that live on the roof, the light they give off is beautiful however they are not. Up close though they look like a long and slimy piece of snot. They glow to attract insects to fly towards them and get stuck in their sticky threads hanging down from the ceiling, the hungrier the glow worm the brighter it glows. They also glow brighter in response to noise as they think it means more flies.

After a short walk downhill we came upon some water. At this point we did a bit of 'proper' caving and crawled up a narrow, watery passage to an underground waterfall. On the way Anna saw an eel, which she felt was a rather unwelcome sight. We had been told they live in the cave but as we were on the last tour of the day they'd all be long gone only to reappear from their hidy holes when the tourists had left for the day.

Now came the 'black water rafting' part of the black water rafting trip. This is not an underground version of white water rafting, instead it is very sedate and relaxing and quite dark, hence the black water. We sat in our tubes and floated in a line, the guide had hold of Anna's feet and she had hold of mine. We went through some quite high tunnels with all our lights turned off so that we could best see the beautiful light from the glow worms on the roof which was similar to looking up at the stars. We could see where the tunnel went because the glow worms only live directly above the water; the guide called this his 'GPS' - glow worm positioning system.

We came to the first obstacle, a 2m high waterfall jump which was done backwards. We had to stand on the edge and hold the tube to our bum and then drop. Anna went first and got her bum stuck in the tube, hehe, but was brave for going first; I followed and would like to think I did it with a little more style. The second obstacle followed another float below the glow worms. This time instead of a jump they had constructed a slide to take us 7m further underground. Again Anna went first and this time she let out a very girly scream. The slide was quite fast and the water at the bottom was very cold and tried to go up your nose as you splashed into it.

All too quickly we'd covered the 1.5km of underground trails and had the 104 (approximately) steps to get back up into day light. After being driven back to base it was time for a hot shower and drink and the end of a thoroughly enjoyable trip. :-)