Spelunking!!!

The adventure for this second weekend of school was Black Water Rafting. 7 of us rented a car and drove to the West Coast of New Zealand. The drive was about 4 hours long. I slept for about half it each each way. We arrived at our campsite Friday night, set up camp, and my roommate (Taylor) and I hung out in our tent for a little before going to bed. Saturday morning, we were woken up bright and early by a very annoying rooster. We went off to the cave tour company and our adventure began. They outfitted us in wet suits and we headed off to the cave. We had a short train ride to get there and once we arrived we got our tubes and went into the caves. It was a limestone cave that has the largest glow worm colony of about 1 million glow worms. We hiked throughout the cave for about a kilometer or so. The stalagmites and other formations were amazing. I got a cool rock but it unfortunately snapped in half.

Before we got into the river we went and got our first glimpse of the glow worms. They had cool web like strands hanging down which is how they catch food. I touched a really long one and a ton of dew droplets fell off. When we looked closer at them I saw a few moving around, that was cool. We also saw a pupae form and were lucky enough to see an adult one which is very rare. It had just transformed.

Afterwards we got into the river finally and the rafting (more like tubing) began. It started off like a lazy river and we saw the entire glow worm colony. It was amazing!! It looked like an entire galaxy in a cave. They glowed green and occasionally saw a few blink red. That part lasted for about 5-10 mins, it was all dark, with just the glow worms for light. Once past the colony and out of the cave we went down the river to the pick up point. We hit some "rapids" a few times and continued to float along. The rest of the day we went and explored along the west coast.

I saw black sand beaches that had pretty firm sand actually. It was cool, the waves would come in, circle this rock formation and cut away at the beach. the swells were huge and the spray would go so high up as it crashed against the cliffs. Its always so cool to see the ocean coming from Colorado. Its so vast! There were these crazy cliffs that people climb. I wish I had the gear in order to do so. It looked like a crazy fun climb, you climb above the ocean pretty much.

After we went to this little German pizza place at another campsite. It was expensive but they had cheap beer at least. We went back to the campsite, hung out a little, and went to bed. The next morning we left pretty early and got drenched by the rain once we were getting back.