Day 4

With our gift certificate redeemed we had a date with some glowworms. We arose from Van, with the sun already working hard at 7am, and we strolled through a local park to some hot springs, sulfurous and bubbling, with ducks and larvae making it their home. The hot soups of life. On our way out of town we stopped by a pharmacy for soap and a watch, which we quickly discovered why it was only $14 NZ. The band broke repeatedly for the rest of the day, and has since lived in the utensil drawer in Van.

We drove back west and south, maintaining our zigzagging route through the north island, headed for Waitomo. We found the grassy rolling hills giving way to rolling rainforest, which isn’t to say that there weren’t still sheep everywhere there wasn’t forest.

After many twists and turns we made it to our 1pm glowworm cave adventure, about an hour early.  This worked out great as we got lunch at a local café. 

At The Legendary Black Water Rafting Co. we signed our paperwork and waited for our guides.  Soon Chris, Lofty, and Rory told us how to put on our full body wet suits (“you don’t spell wet suit with the P so please don’t put pee in your wet suit”), harnesses, white rubber boots, and helmets. A quick van drive with our three guides, a Chinese couple, an Australian couple (must have been 18 maybe 20), and another couple from California, and we arrived at the entrance to the cave.

            A quick abseiling class using a rack, a device with these metal bars that the rope weaves through, we descended one by one down the 90 foot hole into the cave.  As we waited in the dark for each person behind us to join, we looked up into the darkness to see blue gray yellow dots light up the ceiling 20 feet above us.  Our first glowworms!

The “adventure” was slow getting moving, as it was a train of 8 people, of varying abilities and boldness. We descended a tunnel to a wait point where Lofty and Rory went ahead of us. Chris one by one tied us into a zipline, and flicking our lights off just before Chris let go, we sailed probably 30m in darkness watching glowworms fly by.

We were then in a sizable cavern with a river running through it, below us. We knew we were about to get wet. But before that, the guys broke out the hot chocolate and honey granola bar, like a moist Nature Valley bar. With our core temperatures up, we proceeded one by one to jump about 3m into the river with inner tubes held to our butts. The water was shockingly cold as it jumped up and over your back and smacking you in the face. But that of course faded as our wetsuits began doing their jobs, and we quickly became accustomed to the wonderful feeling of warm water rushing down your arms as soon as you lowered your cold hands. We floated upstream pulling ourselves along a rope, as we stared in awe at the thousands of glowworms overhead. This became a long beautiful wait as the Chinese couple had difficulties navigating the inner tubes, and we waited happily while Lofty went to retrieve them. We then learned that glowworms are indeed gnat larvae, and the light being emitted is from their phosphorescent shit. They live 9 months after having hatched and eaten all of their siblings eggs, then as a larvae drop tiny strings to catch other smaller insects, metamorphose, and fornicate, lay eggs, and die within 36 hours.

We made our way back to the larger cavern where the real caving adventure began. We ditched the inner tubes and started walking down river, stumbling over unseen rocks and bumbling into ruts, we slid over small waterfalls, and floated through tiny birth canal shaped holes in the rock. Around each turn there was a new adventure.  At one point we all just picked up our feet and floated down the river.  We climbed up two waterfalls where the sound of the water pounding reverberated off the small cavern making it impossible to hear.   Finally, cold and chilled we emerged from the cave into a wooded mossy clearing, the cool air so much warmer then in the caves below.  On the van ride back we each recounted our favorite parts.

            Back at the headquarters we all stripped off our wet suits and jumped in warm showers. We ate some bagels and saw the goofy pictures of us down in the caves projected on the television screen.  With some postcards in hand we returned to Van exhausted and ready to find our spot of the night.     

            After several kilometers and “why don’t we turn down that road? Or that road?” We finally picked a road and drove about 500 meters off the motorway to a quiet gravel pull off.  Our neighbors on one side were a small herd of cows looking at us, bewildered and an empty field with a brook running through it.  We ate cheese, drank wine and watched the sky turn dark.  It was an amazing day.