He said, she said: Black water rafting in Waitomo

Weekend magazine

27 Oct, 2017 04:00 PM6 mins to read

Walking through the Ruakuri Cave. Photo / Shaun Jeffers

Neil Porten and his teenage daughter, Orla, go black water rafting. Here are their accounts of the adventure.

NEIL

'This year has been so wet it seemed pointless to spend another weekend swimming against the tide. Why not embrace it and just go with the flow? And why not throw my 13-year-old daughter in the deep end too? It wasn't too hard convincing her to swap YouTube for an inner tube and join me black water rafting in Waitomo.

Angus Stubbs, manager of the Legendary Black Water Rafting Company, says visitors to Waitomo rarely make a weekend of it, preferring to tick off the caves in a few hours.

Leaving time for a little more adventure has its rewards. The Ruakuri Cave at water level is a different experience altogether. While above ground, local and overseas visitors alike would be nuts not to check out three short bush walks: the Mangapohue Natural Bridge, the Marokopa and the Ruakuri bushwalks.

Ruakuri Bushwalk starts at the carpark near the Ruakuri Cave. This compact track dips and climbs (not too much), providing views of rushing streams and rocky outcrops from a multitude of heights. After the first duck-and-shuffle tunnel but before the vaulted cave with a river running through it and the second tunnel, I said to my daughter "this is probably one of the best bush walks I've ever done". Unprompted later that evening, Angus said: "I may be biased, but I think that walk it the best short walk in New Zealand." Great minds.

If someone asks you to describe an archetypal waterfall, refer them to Marokopa Falls, a beautiful 35m-high cascade over curved greywacke outcrops.

The beautiful, cascading Marokopa Falls. Photo / Neil Porten

The Mangapohue Natural Bridge Walk is so easy and yet so picturesque. The track is flat but the gorge is steep as you enter a partially collapsed cave whose 17m-high roof vaults the river below.

That's Saturday afternoon sorted; three superb free public reserves, before a great local meal and a comfortable night's sleep (see right).

Predictably, the weather packs up overnight and it's raining as we suit up for the rafting. The company is celebrating its 30th anniversary, proud of its position as a pioneer of adventure tourism (taking paying customers a year before the bungy blokes, their website boasts). It is a slick and professional operation.

Our party of 12 — Orla and I are the youngest and oldest respectively and the only Kiwis (apart from guide George) among the Swiss, Germans, Americans and Malaysians — are soon neoprene-clad and issued with tyre tubes. After a quick test of our ability to jump backwards from height into water and on to our tubes (note to self: keep helmet done up at all times) we are scrabbling down a narrow cut in the rocks and into Ruakuri Cave.

First impressions: neither the air nor water temperature is too cold; there is no smell and the rocks are not slimy; the fast-moving water at calf-height is noisy. Anticipation is high.

The Mangapohue Natural Bridge Walk. Photo / Orla Porten

After an initial clamber, where it's worth paying more attention to where you put your feet than whether the roof is too low (thanks, done-up helmet!) our other guide, Beth, leads the first float, our upturned faces just a few centimetres from the roof. Where the water depth allows, we float, around and under rocky obstacles, often with glow-worms within reach. Elsewhere we're back on our feet picking a route downstream.

A hole in the roof of the cave 65m up lets in a shaft of daylight and a shower of rainwater. The weather's still crap topside, then. A quick check with Orla confirms she's having a great time and she leaps off the two jumps without a care.

After the torrent of the second waterfall, the stream broadens and slows in the highest and widest part of the cave. Here we float under a Milky Way of neon-blue glow-worms, thoughtfully accompanied by George whistling a soundtrack of movie themes. Around the final bend in the river daylight appears through a trio of gaps between the cave roof and the water's surface.

It's not a relief to re-emerge into the light; it's a disappointment to be finished with the underworld. But the warm showers and hot soup and bagels back at base go some way to alleviating the let-down. It's still raining, but our spirits remain undampened.

ORLA PORTEN

We drive through Waitomo quite a bit and almost every time Dad brings up the fact that we "need to go black water rafting". So he jumped at the opportunity and stuck his hand up for me. Thanks, Dad.

To be honest, I was pretty apprehensive at first: with the recent release of the movie It and the fact that I had watched Titanic just a few days before, I had plenty of water-related worries.

However, once we arrived, I realised the guides knew what was going on and that I was completely safe.

I was the youngest person in our group but definitely not the most anxious one there. Our guides did a fantastic job of showing us how to keep safe and still enjoy ourselves.

As we were floating through the last part of the cave one of our guides, George, started whistling the themes to a bunch of movies, which was pretty cool.

As for the cave itself, I was surprised at how different each part was; this led to lots of walking and ducking, as well as jumping and floating. Dad was not very good at holding on to me and I ended up being in the front for most of the final float out of the cave, only to be overtaken at the last minute by ... Dad.

As I was climbing out of the river, I watched as George pointed out some "bush asparagus" to Dad, telling him "it's great to eat if you get lost in the bush" — which was good because I remember Dad telling me the day before about his fear of doing just that.

STAYING THERE

A short drive west, ideally positioned between Marokopa Falls and the commercial caving
operations is Te Tiro, a two-cabin set-up run by Angus Stubbs and his wife, Rachel.

The cosy cabins sleep four, are self-contained and offer a spectacular vista looking east across the King Country. In better weather you can see Te Aroha to the north and Tongariro National Park to the south.

Angus recommended the Huhu Cafe for dinner, and the bread, fries, salad and pair of entrees nearly fooled us into passing on the desserts. But sanity prevailed and we lucked out with a rich chocolate and orange mousse for the teenager and an A+ apple and rhubarb crumble for me.

On tap are beers from King Country Brewing Co, a Waitomo outfit, and in keeping with the weekend's theme, I wet my whistle with an excellent IPA.