Glowing caves
Trip Start
Oct 05, 2007
1
63
97
Trip End
Oct 04, 2008
Otorohanga,
North Island,
New Zealand
Friday, May 16, 2008
While we were here we did a caving trip called rap, raft and rock, which only had the two of us taking part! This involved rappelling down into the cave, walking up stream (theres a river running though it) and along the side of the cave to where some of the glow worms are, at this point we were told to turn our head lights off and follow the guide, apart from that didn't work too well as neither of us could see a thing, so we ended up having to all hold hands which worked rather better!! It was amazing when we got there though, it looked like someone had put up fairy lights in the ceiling, although once you get told the life cycle of what are infact maggots burning their shit to produce the light, everything gets considerably less romantic! We then black water rafted (so called because it is dark) back down stream, past the entrance, and onwards, floating along with the shit burning maggots above....magical! Too soon we were instructed to get off the rings and pose incessantly infront of the glow worms - all very silly! Then we had a little explore around, which to my horror involved squeezing through incredibly small gaps...I did the first one but the second one was all too much! We had a look at all the cave formations including beautiful Avens- that look like your looking up into a church spire! We had a stop for some food - chocoladen and hot orange - very welcome and then started our walk back to the begining - up stream - very tiring!! Then all that was left was rock climbing up the bit we had rappelled down.....piece of cake...and a hot shower!!
The next day we took part in a more sedate cave exploration with sue, where we were taken though the cave on fantastic walkways seeing all sorts of rock formations including things that looked like cauliflower, curtains (my faveourite), more avons as well as the usual stalictites and mites! We were also shown the incredbile fossils that had been found of shells, oysters (which wer HUGE) and a moa (seriously huge flightless birds that used to inhabit NZ untill they were hunted to extinction) hip bone! We then had a delicious hot chocolate, went for a walk in the bush where we went through some natural tunnels and saw more caves! And rather randomly we went to see Angora rabbits being sheared - possibly the most hillariously horrifying thing i've ever seen in my life - cute fluffy bunny has legs looped through rope and is then ratcheted out like its on a rack and then spun round on a spit as it is shawn....its hair was lovely and soft though!!
Then it was time to move on as we realised we had quite a lot to do in a little over a week! So we decided to head for Auckland to hire a car.....
