BLACK WATER RAFTING

I should have realized when they handed me the beat up miner's helmet with a little built in light that this was not an ordinary rafting trip. Our day had started with a two-hour drive south from Auckland, New Zealand to the Waitomo Glow Worm Caves. We had been instructed to bring a swimming suit and towel. Little did we know that by the time we were outfitted to enter the underground caves we would be rigged in yellow wet suits, purple divers socks, yellow gumboots, purple gloves, orchid skid pants all complimented by the yellow hard plastic "caver's" helmets. Throw on a black inner tube and we could easily be mistaken for the cast of the Creature from the Black Lagoon. With bodies and tubes packed like a tin of overripe sardines in the transport van, we depart to the orientation area for safety and shock therapy. Our first maneuver is practiced on the ground beside a small river. "Lay on your back on your tube and put your feet on the shoulders of the tuber in front of you" Jeff our guide instructs. We would later use this snake imitating procedure to float passages lacking sufficient headroom to traverse sitting upright. "Lean left, lean right, straight" Jeff commands. This is how we will turn corners in the cave. With lights extinguished we will also use this connection to stay together, floating on our backs below a jet black cave ceiling beaming with glowworms. Our next indoctrination is how to jump off waterfalls in the dark. "Hold the tube on your butt with both hands and push off like you were sitting down" our other guide Katherine instructs. Off the dock backward into fifty-degree water is a definite shock, even in a wet suit. We will later perform this maneuver in the dark and the water will be no warmer. Although the wet suit conserves some body heat, it lives up to its name, in the water it's wet. "And prepare to get numb hands and feet" Katherine cautions. Twelve bodies dripping from our practice jump cram into the van as it proceeds to the narrow bushy trail leading to the underground cave opening. Once inside, the first dozen yards are deceiving. Wading down a dimly lit rocky streambed in less than six inches of water we soon meet a larger stream flowing in from somewhere in the dark on the left. Jeff instructs everyone to turn on headlamps. We were now almost knee deep in water and the darkness beyond our lights is smothering. The fix, if your light quits, is to just bang on your head. Someone suggests we should have done something like that before agreeing to come down here. The intensity of a distant reverberation increases as we pick our way around a turn concealing a second junction of streams. The noise drowns out conversation as the river ahead suddenly disappears into ink black darkness. Eerie stalagmite and stalactite formations are everywhere. Here is the waterfall we practiced for. We surge out of the waist deep current up the rocks above the water on our left. You can faintly see coal black water cascading into a swirling pool thirty feet below. "Hold the tube on your butt with both hands and push off backwards in a sitting motion" Jeff yells as he shoves the next person in line off the ledge. Katherine has preceded us to keep the pool clear, pushing each gasping rafter beyond the trajectory of the next. Cold water down the back of my wet suit sends shivers through my entire body. Thoughts of facing another jump like that does the same. We hardly have time to wipe our eyes before Katherine puts us in the snake, to pass under a ceiling with no more than six inches spare clearance. Around the next bend another ceiling is so low even the snake won't work. We roll off the tubes, and channel through heads first, pushing our tubes out front. The river gets narrow, deep and swift. We cautiously inch forward on a rocky shelf for a few hundred feet. Everyone hopes the low roar might be wind at the cave exit, no such luck. This waterfall has a side chute so we can go down feet first like a schoolyard slippery slide. It is almost fun but you still get freezing water down your neck. Back to the snake, this time for a slow dark float through an enormous glow worm grotto teeming with stalagtites. We wind through narrow channels into large caverns back to narrow channels. In the dark we could be going in circles for all anyone knows. We remain prone, floating with lights out for a dazzling display of glowworms. Jeff says they are really maggots but no one would probably come if they called them the Waitomo Maggot Caves. Echoing cheers reverberate back through the cavern. The lead rafters see a dim light ahead. The slow steady paddle accelerates to full steam ahead. The pinprick of light increases in size until we are in daylight again. At the end of the tunnel we roll off the tubes, push them on shore and scramble single file up a steep boulder strewn path to the road. The river changes color, from black to a cool blue as it continues through brush without us. Our alien look exaggerates as we remove hats and gloves and expose untamed soggy hair and blushing pink withered skin, looking more like drowned rats than civilized people. The van chugs uphill with twelve exhausted bodies, back to the staging area. Extracting yourself from a still dripping skintight wet suit is an undeniable challenge. The pulling, pushing and peeling continues until the last boot and final suit is separated from corrugated, goose bumped, pink flushed skin. The hot steamy showers are like finding paradise. No one is in any rush for this part of the journey to end. The hot water soothes aches, limbers muscles and softens the memory of the dark icy cave water. Dry and warm again,i twos and threes, we casually make our way up the path to the restaurant. On the patio, with a mid day sun casting dappled shadows through the trees, we sip coffee, relish mugs of hot tomato soup and munch cream cheese bagels. Safe out of the water on dry ground, the dialogue is braver. Everyone experienced the caves in their own private way. In the dark, you could be as calm or afraid as you wanted, no one else could see if there was fear in your eyes. The conversation was of courageous feats, jumping off the waterfall, squeezing through the narrow opening, recovering from a slip on the ledge. But no one talked about donning gumboots and a caver's helmet and going back down there again.