So I had been in New Zealand almost 2 days now and I had hardly done anything. But today would be my first adventure! I was in Waitomo, which is famous for its underground glowworm caves. The native Maori people always knew about these caves, but they didn’t reveal this secret until 1887. An English surveryor befriended a Maori chief in the area and finally got it out of him. Now there are a number of tourist companies that run trips through the area.
I looked at the different options and decided to go with The Legendary Black Water Rafting Co.. It was a 5 hour trip and I would have to wear a wetsuit the whole time. I was so nervous my sickness would give me troubles, but I got through the whole trip without any troubles. By the way, I could have bought a photo disc of our adventure at the end of the day, but it was quite a bit of money for only 15 or so pictures (most of which didn’t even have me in it). So all these pics you're seeing are not from my trip, but they're pretty much the same.
The group I was with was pretty weird. There was one couple from England that I got along with alright. The rest of the people were part of the same family from Australia and they were kind of annoying. More on them later.
We started off by suiting up in our wetsuits. We drove to the cave entrance and practiced our rappelling. The first part of the experience would be to rappel 37 metres down into the cavern. From the pictures I was expecting it to be this sweet drop into a large open space, but it was totally lame. I didn’t think we’d have to go down a wall, but we did the whole way in the dark, which isn’t a very satisfying experience.
The next part of the journey we walked through the caves and our guides told us some interesting stuff. At one point we got to zipline down to another section, in the dark! That was sweet, I really enjoyed that. I was the last one to go after one of the Aussies. We were just supposed to gently swing out and hang there until the guide let us go, but she totally just jumped out! The line clipped the guides hand, he was so pissed off. Then as the guide is hooking me up he’s like, “Let me know if you need some earplugs.” I didn’t really understand what he meant until he said, “Those Aussies are going to give me a headache!” Haha, the tour guide was complaining to me about the other people on the tour!!!
We got to one spot and had some cookies. Then it was time for the tubing. We were on a ledge about 6 ft above a very slow moving river (actually it was more like a stream sized lake). We grabbed an inner tube, put it on our butts and jumped off the ledge! I was the last one to get a tube and the choices were slim, it was either one too small or one too big. If you have the same choice, take the too big one, the too small tube caused me nothing but hassle. First when I jumped and landed in the water I immediately flipped backwards, whereas most people landed comfortably. Second it wasn’t the most comfortable ride floating down the river. Everytime I tried to paddle I would almost fall off.
The water wasn’t very deep, and at some points we would wade to the next section. That one guide was giving the Aussies such a hard time, haha. He kept picking on them and one time he told them they had to walk along the edge of the wall or else they’d get sucked into the undertow. So this poor kid is struggling to move along and of course, the guide knows there’s a dropoff and no way you could keep walking so he slips in and starts freaking out! Only to stand up two seconds later...
As we went down a ways our guide told us to shut our lights off. Above us lining the roof of the cave were hundreds of gloworms! It was incredible.
They drop these little lines like spiders and just camp there. The glow that comes off of them attracts the bugs that come down the river. When they fly up to get to the light they get trapped in the lines and the glowworms have their feast. Very fascinating.
We got to a spot where water was pouring into the cave and that was our time to turn back. But instead of paddling back the guide got us to link up. We laid back on our tubes, had the person in front grab our legs while we grabbed the person’s legs behind us. Then the guide pulled us along. That was my favorite part of the trip. It was such a peaceful ride with all those glowworms above you like stars.
We ditched the tubes and had to do a bit of climbing the rest of the way. One kid went down the wrong way and the guide started freaking out, haha, that guy hated them. The last leg of the journey we climbed up a waterfall, that was pretty sweet. The guide was telling me different footholds and that, but I should have just done my own thing. My reach is a lot longer than I think he realized, so it was awkward doing what he was saying.
Anyways, we made it through the whole experience and I was feeling good! And once I had that wetsuit off I was in the bathroom at least 6 times. I went to the tourist place and got them to find me a place to stay in Rotorua. That was so sweet, I didn’t have to do anything really. The lady did all the calling for me and she worked out a pretty nice deal for me. I was going to take it easy and spend two nights in Rotorua. That girl was really cute actually, and she said “cool” a lot in her NZ accent which was really attractive for some reason, haha. I was too shy to hit on her of course.
So away I went to Rotorua. I found the place alright and settled in for the night. Once again I was grateful to get another room by myself at a hostel. Unfortunately there was this music festival going on that weekend and it was so loud. I was hoping to get to sleep early, but whatever, I just lied there and watched some more Super Troopers.
End of Day Fifteen.
1 comment:
Man glowworms are sweet!
Also, I had that doll.
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