Waitomo caves
Igna not only booked our bus ride to Waitomo but dropped us off at the bus stop quite early in the morning before heading to work. A sleepy ride there and we arrived with plenty of time to unload our bags at the hostel, have a little snack and even read before our ride came to pick us up for the pending adventure.
We arrived at Rap Raft and Rock to find a group just returning from a tour and another young couple waiting to go out on the next with us. The returning group looked happy and reassured us the trip would be fun and well worth it, not that wee were too worried about it but it's nice to hear they were satisfied since its not what you'd call a cheep experience. We had heard from so many people that it was worth the money so decided to take the plunge. Literally, after riding to what seamed like nowhere, gearing up with wetsuit, hot pink pants and harness we walked down to a cluster of trees in the middle of a slopped pasture. We were informed that the area was riddled with caves bellow and the openings to them usually are where a random bunch of tres are growing out of it. Off a platform we repelled down about 90 meters Into a dark wet cave with a river running right through it.
The walk up stream with tubes in hand was quite easy an well lit with our head lamps attached to helmets. Our informative guide, Simon with his British accent and good sense of humor kept us entertained until he had us set the tubes aside and turn off our lights in the pitch black space around us. I"m sort of nervous in the dark still like once of those childhood fears I've never gotten over. We could see the glow worms above and around us just barely lighting our space until BAM! All shocked from the random loud noise we could all of a sudden see the glow worms a million all around us almost like the night sky from the middle of the ocean with no light pollution. Simon had smashed his tube in the water supposedly heightening our flight or fight sense which opened the blood vessels in our eyes to see them more clearly. It worked cause the whole cave lit up to where we could even see each other's silhouettes.
These "glow worms", exclusive to Southern Australia, New Zealand and the Cook Islands were something spectacular beyond description all glowing together in a dark wet space. Up close they're just worms with slimy webs hanging from them to attract food in the form of other bugs and other glow worms. Cannibalistic little buggers but they don't live very long once the 6 month larva/worm period is over. They basically have one day in the form of little flies to mate as much as possible and at this point don't have mouths big enough to eat anything so why not just have a lot of sex!
Back to the tubes the 5 of us floated down the river in the dark again passing the spot we repelled down and going deeper down stream into the cave. After our thrill ride on tubes we walked farther and deeper, scaling rocks, crawling through small spaces and even going through holes under water that opened up to other parts of the cave. Stalactites and stalagmites hundreds of years old reminded me that i'm such a small part of this fascinating eco system I live in for only such a small amount of time in retrospect. Right before turning around we asked Simon for one last photo but unfortunately he couldn't "have evidence" of taking us as far as he had gone. The four of us were apparently far more ambitious and fit than most of his groups so he took us farther than normal. The five of us had a great time laughing most of the way out. We were so glad we got a good small group that we got along with and a really fun guide. Well spend money in our eyes!
Off to Abel Tasmen National park for a 3 or so day kayak adventure!
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