Underground, Overground...
Trip Start
Oct 15, 2007
1
54
97
Trip End
Aug 24, 2008
Waitomo Caves,
North Island,
New Zealand
Sunday, February 10, 2008
The following morning, as we were driving in to Waitomo, Jacob's mum called, so Kirsty ended up having to navigate the van according to mobile phone signal strength for a while.
We found a place outside the main town that was offering a tour of the glow worm caves which included some abseiling, caving, walking through the glow worm caves, black water rafting (essentially floating down a slowly moving river on a tractor inner tube) and climbing. We booked ourselves onto the 3pm tour and went off to explore Waitomo.
It turns out that there was very little else to see or do in Waitomo. We looked at the tourist information centre for a while and drove around a little, which confirmed that there was, indeed, nothing else in Waitomo. We parked the van in a large car park, made butties and tea, realised just how English we can be at times (although we didn't cut the crusts off), wrote up a little bit of TravelPod, before going back to the caving place.
Including us, there were four people on the tour, which was guided by a young (oh, so very young) guy called Tim. The other people on the tour were both new to this sort of thing. The guy, a Dutchman called Kö ln (or so it sounded), was reasonably confident and happy to do as he was told. The girl, an English lass called Claire, was terrified of everything.
Tim didn't really help.
Probably in his early twenties, he had the maturity of someone half that age. He appeared to have just discovered the knob gag, and made constant, relentless, tedious filthy comments. Claire was unhappy about dangling from a rope, so he told her a story about a vision he'd had, when performing a sacrifice earlier that day, of her plummeting to her death. Presumably he intended to lighten the mood. Kirsty managed to put her mind a bit more at ease, which, as another client on a guided trip, wasn't really her responsibility. Nevertheless, we both ended up putting Claire's mind at ease quite a bit, as Tim clearly wasn't going to manage.
We sloshed around upstream through the caves full of glow worms, which, when we had turned our lights out and allowed our eyes to adjust, looked like a night sky. That's apparently the point: the insects which fly through the caves think that the specks of light against a dark background is the night sky, so, as is the wont of insects, they fly up towards it. The glow worms dangle sticky little fronds down from the roof, like single strands of spider's web, and the insects get caught and eaten. The fronds, usually about six to eight inches long, have apparently been recorded at around a couple of feet.
Tim had, after lights out, slammed one of the inner tubes into the water, creating a loud bang. The resultant adrenalin production leads to, amongst other things, pupil dilation which quickens the development of night vision. Quite clever.
Having clambered up to the top of the cave system, we floated back downstream, sitting in our tubes, looking up at the pretty little points of light. Occasionally we'd stop, get out, do some pointless squeezing through a little hole off to the side of the huge natural corridor down which we were walking (so we could get a caving type experience and attendant photo - all seemed a bit forced and laboured to be honest). At the bottom of the cave system, we stopped, had chocolate and hot juice, tried to talk amongst ourselves and ignore the puerile attempts at humour Tim was still making, then clambered off again.
There were a few more squeezes and photos, then we arrived back at the bottom of the rope down which we had abseiled to get in. We climbed, in turn, up the staircase like rocky side of the gorge, Claire still doing her girly nervous thing, Tim still doing nothing to help. On the surface, it was no longer the wet miserable day it had been before we descended, and the contrast between the dank underground passages we had just traversed and the sunny blue-skied hilltop was very pleasant.
We showered, having been organised enough to take shampoo and the like with us, knowing we'd get a shower after the trip, but that, as we now lived in a van, we wouldn't have such an opportunity that often. We went back to the centre, where we were fed soup (which would have been more welcome if the weather hadn't improved), looked through the photos Tim had taken, didn't buy any copies, and left.
We drove back to the same layby as we'd been in the previous night (it was starting to get dark by this point), made the elegant gourmet repast that is corned beef hash, and went to bed.
