Waitomo Caves

There are very few happenings in Waitomo besides the glowworm caves. They have 2-3 hotels and a couple of cafes, so the reasonable option was to stay 20 minutes away in Otorohanga the night before our adventure in the caves. We pulled into a campground off the main road. The camp hosts were really friendly and gave us lots of helpful pointers…however, they forgot to mention the Kiwi House and Native Bird Park right behind the campground. We read the guest book in the kitchen and quickly got an idea of what our night would be like. One backpacker wrote “Loved the beautiful chorus of birds throughout the night.” Kiwis are nocturnal, but the kiwi houses try to reverse their schedules so visitors can actually see them during the day. Apparently, the new intern’s attempts to reverse the kiwis’ schedule failed miserably because they were talking ALL NIGHT LONG. By 4am, the whole bird park was engaged in excited conversation and any chance of sound sleeping was gone.

On the strong recommendation of our visa sponsor, we signed up for the Haggas Honking Holes tour. We didn’t really catch much of her description except “Indiana Jones in a washing machine”. After suiting up in 8-10mm thick wetsuits, helmets, and white gumboots/wellies (looking fabulous!), we took a practice run repelling down a small hill and headed for the cave entrance. The guides laughed that this particular trip didn’t allow for any time to get used to the equipment and repelling before the big stuff because the cave entrance started with a 65 foot repel down a jagged waterfall. Rachel and I were the last two to descend to the mysterious cave floor. Everyone before us had turned off their lights, so it was tough to tell how much further we needed to go until we dropped into a knee deep pool of water at the bottom. The pace of the trip didn’t slow down and the helmets and thick wetsuits were much appreciated as we bumped our heads, slid through holes slightly larger than me, and crawled on hands and knees through frigid pools enhanced with sharp and rocky edges. After several more repels down waterfalls, we came to a room full of glowworms where our guide (According to another guide, had earned a PhD in glowworms/fungus gnats...wow) gave us a humorous account of the fungus gnat's life. A glowworm isn’t actually a worm at all- it is the larvae of the fungus gnat that drops several sticky fishing lines, like a spider’s web, which glows a blue-green to attract insects for food. The insect flies towards the enchanting light and gets stuck in the fishing line. An adult cannot eat at all, so it spends its entire life (3 days) frantically searching for a mate. After they mate, the female goes off to lay her eggs while the male blissfully heads towards the beautiful glowing lights above and gets caught in a fishing line. After the female lays her eggs, she absentmindedly heads for another set of glowing lights and gets caught in another line, only to be eaten by her unborn niece.

We climbed through a few more tunnels and over some slippery and narrow natural bridges (that would not be allowed in the U.S. without hand rails) and popped out of the cave to a warm afternoon. We showered and headed for Rotorua