Simon & Caroline's World Tour 07/08

Today's adventure managed to squeeze in a little bit of everything. Our Underworld Rafting trip began with a short bus ride from Charleston to a steam train which took us through the bush alongside the Nile river. We were dropped off at the changing room (a bench in the middle of the forest!!) where we struggled into our wetsuits and a whole other host of paraphanalia required for our impending adventure. We were then presented with an inner tube (think big rubber ring) which we carried across the river, through some more forest and then up into the cave. Inside, the cave we lugged our inner tubes past impressive stalagtites, stalagmites, columns, shawls etc. They were all pretty similar to the steliothems (!!) we saw in Oz except that those formations were almost 10 times as old as today's offerings, simply because New Zealand is so much younger geographically than Oz.

After we had been carrying our inner tubes for what seemed like an age we were finally allowed to get in them. We all linked ourselves together in a long chain in preparation to paddle down the tunnel of love. We had all turned our head torches off by this point so it was pitch black inside the cave but then as we turned a corner and looked up we were treated to the most impressive array of glowworms twinkling away like stars in the night sky. Pretty cool.

We drifted past two awesome cave entrances where it was quite beautiful to see daylight after so long underground. Next came the fun part. The reason for carrying those inner tubes all morning. We got to ride the rapids of the river back to our changing room and the train. With bums lifted to avoid a river smacking, we all made it safely back to dry land with only one capsizer amongst us (done in style Cat :) It was all quite an adventure and very good value for money, we were even provided with photos without paying the fortune usually required on these kind of trips. Fantastic! (You can actually check these out on the website if you wish; www.caverafting.com Just follow the links to the pics for Underworld Rafting, morning of the 6th of April.)

After a slap up lunch to refuel we were on the road again. Next stop pancake rocks. An impressive rock formation set amongst a coastline not too dissimilar to the Great Ocean Road. The rocks themselves are made up of layer upon layer of thin rock which looks like lots of stacks of pancakes. Hence the name. Some more spectacular winding road later (including two very narrow one lane bridges also used by trains) we pulled up the van in our campsite for the night. What with all our adventures and the clocks having gone back an hour we are suddenly in need of a kip! Good night.