Waitomo Caves

I'm a little behind so i have a few posts to publish from the past three days. First one is below, from Friday.

Today's adventure brought us on another drive out to Waitomo, about two hours west of Taupo. Our hostel set everything up for us, and Jan with Geyserlink shuttles picked us up bright and early at 7:15 (I don't think I've slept past 7 more than once this whole trip!). Sunrise in the countryside is something I'm beginning to get used to, it's usually breathtaking, but today we had the added bonus of spotting a huge, full rainbow that we actually drove under at one point, it was amazing. I sadly couldn't get a good picture but it was a great start to the day.

Waitomo is home to a huge number of caves, most of which are occupied by thousands of glowworms. In Maori, Wai means water, and Tomo means "hole in the ground", so the name signifies the place where water flows out of the ground. There are dry and wet cave tours in Waitomo, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to go "blackwater rafting". Our tour brought us for an hour through one of the longest caves in the area, by waking, wading and tubing/floating when the water got high. The best part about the caves is that they are filled with glowworms-- larvae that hang from the ceiling and light up to attract bugs as prey.

We started the tour by donning wetsuits.... That were basically frozen in the 5c temps! Then we went on about a ten minute trek through grazing fields and descended down a ton of steps into what looked like a jungle floor. We got our tubes and then entered the cave. In the very first chamber our guide had us turn our headlamps off and we were immediately surrounded by thousands of glowworms. As my eyes got adjusted, more and more lights appeared like stars in a dark sky. It really looked just like we were in a planetarium, with tons of glowworm constellations appearing above us. We kept walking through the cave until the water was knee deep, then waist deep, and then finally at one point they had us walking with no lights, holding onto the person on front of us and using the wall of the cave to guide ourselves. There were glowworms everywhere, it was the coolest thing. We got to the first waterfall and had to jump backwards down it, about 6 feet, and later there was another much larger waterfall that we went down an insanely fast slide in the dark-- really scary! My favorite part of the whole tour was when we all linked together in a chain in our tubes and floated, lights off, starting at all the glowworms lighting the whole cave. It felt like an amusement park ride... I'm so sad I couldn't take pictures but it was fabulous.

After we warmed up after the tour (my hands and feet were totally frozen), our nice driver Jan picked us back up and took us to a short hike near the entrance of the other caves. It was beautiful, felt like we were in the jungle, and the caves were really cool to see all the water flowing out of. I did Gerry a few photos of that so they are below.

Next up, Rotorua, the thermal capital of New Zealand!