Waitomo Caves, New Zealand (Post #99)
Mike writes…
On March 15, after having a relaxing evening at the Ceder Lodge Motel in Hamilton the night before, Michele drove us the easy 1.5 hours to Waitomo Caves. We were a bit too early to check into the YHA so we had a look around the town, checking out the only grocery store (which amounted to little more than a convenience store) and shopping for some postcards. After checking in to the YHA at around 11 a.m., we walked over to Waitomo Adventures to set up our caving trip for the next day.
Waitomo Caves are known for their large glow worm populations. Glow worms are actually the larvae stage of a fly. The “worm” lives in damp caves and produces something like webs in which it traps insects upon which it subsequently feeds. It attracts these insects by creating a chemical reaction in its body that results in phosphoresence (i think i have that spelled close to right). Insects see the glowing and think it is the stars and fly towards the glow and get caught in the “web”. Unfortunately, it isn’t normally possible to capture this on a camera because the tours don’t allow cameras. This is because the flash from a camera allegedly disturbs the glow worms and causes them to stop glowing.
Anyway, we had been debating about what kind of tour to take since several options are offered by all of the outfitters in town. After finding out that we wouldn’t be able to take a camera no matter which option we chose, we decided on the Ultimate Lost World caving trip which was referred to as a “wet” trip. Since we couldn’t bring a camera anyway, it didn’t matter to us whether the trip was wet or dry.
Next we drove the car to the next town to stock up on groceries since we didn’t like the options in town. This was the nice thing about having our own car — we could go pretty much anywhere we wanted anytime we wanted. The evening of the 15th was pretty much uneventful except for the mobscene created in the kitchen by the passengers from one of the hop-on, hop-off backpacker buses that arrived late in the afternoon. We were really glad we didn’t choose to use one of these because it seemed like mostly young (18-22 y.o.) obnoxious folks out to party and destroy whatever hostel they stopped at. You should have seen the kitchen after they were through…
On March 16, we got up, had our breakfast and headed over to the Waitomo Adventures office and met up with the rest of the 10:30 a.m. group — a couple from Argentina and a couple of friends from Austria and Norway. Shortly afterwards, we were in a van making the 25 minute trip over to the cave entrance with our guides, Scott and Iain.
Once we arrived at the site, we got all of our gear on. This included repelling gear AND full, 7-mm wetsuits since, after all, this was the “wet” trip. Michele had Scott take this picture of us all suited up (this took place just after i finished emarrassing myself trying to speak some Norwegian with Frode)…
Next it was time for a short hike over to the cave entrance. Upon arriving, we practiced with our repelling gear… just getting used to clipping on and off of the safety ropes. Then, it was time for the real beginning of our trip… the descent into the cave mouth. This would require us to “abseil” (what the Kiwis call repelling) 100m to the cave floor. While it is true i have a fear of heights, i had absolutely no trouble with this at all. The abseil was pretty straightforward and took us about 20 minutes while providing some geat views of the cave walls. Once we reached the cave floor, we had a lunch of juice and sandwiches (provided by Waitomo Adventures). While at the lunch spot, Frode and the guides found a couple of eels and some of our team fed parts of their sandwiches to them. funny — eels love ham sandwiches!
It would be too hard for me to describe the rest of the trip in great detail but it included hiking, rock climbing, swimming, and jumping. One of the coolest parts was when we, one by one, suspended ourselves inside a crevice on our elbows, with our feet dangling in the blackness below, until the guides told us to let go. Three meters below we splashed into a huge pool of water. Later we had more “cliff jumps” into the subterranean streams with me unofficially winning the Cannonball award at one.
Here is a picture of Michele and i in what amounted to a natural (and cold-water) spa. You can just barely see the water jets spraying off of our backs. (As i mentioned, we weren’t premitted to bring our own camera. However, Scott had a company digital camera with which he took pictues of everyone at different spots throughout our journey.)
-%20resz.jpg "Epic 10.30am 16 March - Iain & Scott (21)- resz.jpg")
The last attraction in this cavernous wonderland was the glow worms. We stopped, turned off our lights and sat down in an underground planetarium where we stared in wonder at the thousands of glow worms. It really was incredible how much light they gave off. After just a few minutes of our eyes adjusting, we were able to see many of the limestone features just by the light from the glow worms.
A short while later, we walked out of the cave into the late afternoon sun and hiked a few kms over rolling farmland back to the hut where we left the van. After everybody had showers and changed back into street clothes, Scott and Iain cooked up a terrific BBQ for everyone including steak, sausages, veggies and potato salad. By the time the van rolled back into town, we had been gone for 7 hours! We spent a full 4.5 of those underground!
This is a must do adventure in New Zealand!
We stayed one more night in Waitomo before driving down to Wellington to prepare to take the ferry from the North Island at Wellington to the South Island at Picton.
Tags: Category #26: New Zealand
Michele Harmon
sounds wonderful! I’m going to NZ soon, and I definitely plan on checking out the caves. I just have one quick question — did this trip involve any climbing through small tunnels in the rock? I’m not worried about abseiling, dropping, water, etc — I’m just worried about being claustrophobic. I’d love to hear your detailed thoughts on this trip, b/c I’m thinking of busting my wallet and taking it.