Caving with glowworms and then on to Sulfur City
NEW ZEALAND | Wednesday, 10 March 2010 | Views [365]
3/10/2010 5:03 PM
Right now we’re in our hostel in Rotorua, almost at the end of our jam packed day of thermal activity and Maori stuff. But I haven’t written anything about yesterday yet …
We left our suite in Whitianga in the early morning, and managed to make it to the Waitomo Caves by noon. It’s a good thing we got there when we did --- our plan was to do the trio cave tour (2 hour cave walk + amazing dry cave + amazing glow worm cave). If we had’ve gotten there a bit later, we wouldn’t have been able to do all three. Sweet. However, in retrospect, doing all three was a bit much caving, and we totally missed out on black water tubing – doh!
The first cave was a two hour walk. It was pretty well marked and laid out, and the guide was very informative telling us all the cool cave facts. We saw a bit of glow worms and a bunch of stalactites / stalagmites. At one point, the guide even turned off the lights so we could experience 100% total darkness. Pretty cool, although I swear I could still see the hand in front of my face (“lies” as Jess would say, ha).
While we were waiting to go to our next cave, we did a quick 30 minute walk through some forest. This walk felt like we were back in Costa Rica. It was “muy verde” and very jungle-like. Part of the hike even took us through a small cave, around a couple waterfalls, wicked. The whole place had a sort of fairytale air to it.
The next cave was a dry cave, so no glowworms. But the cave formations inside this cave were ridiculous. They had lights strategically placed throughout the whole cave, so it all lit up in a really amazing way.
The last cave was the actual “glowworm cave.” It started out much like the rest of the cave experiences, but in the end we got into a small boat in near pitch black darkness, and slowly and quietly wound down a path that was lit by literally millions (or so it seemed) of glowworms. Craziness! It seriously felt like we were looking at the night sky (not LA/Toronto light polluted night sky, but middle of no where, can see the milky way night sky). Absolutely insane. I think that’s actually the intent of the glowworms as well. The lights attract bugs that they catch to feed on, and when they’re all clustered, it looks like the night sky, so bugs think they’re flying into the sky. Coolio.
After that last cave, we had enough caving. I think in a couple weeks, we’ll be ready to try cave tubing. You basically ride in the pitch black darkness on a rubber doughnut. Sweet. Anyway, by this time of the day, we had barely eaten. We had a decent breakfast, but by the time we got to the caves, we had no time to sit and eat b/c the tours started immediately. Crap. Luckily, we had a decent amount of trail mix and peas to snack on.
Two and a half hours later, we arrived in Rotorua. We kept saying the whole way “oh man; can’t wait to hunker down in one town for three nights.” Then, when we stepped out of the car, we realized that the whole town smells like sulfur. Haha. Doh!! This is a very geothermally active area, so all that creates a lot of delicious sulfuric gas. It’s not TOO unpleasant, but it sure would be nice to sleep without waking up to the smell of rotting eggs.
Our hostel is pretty decent. So far, the one in Auckland has been the “worst,” and even that one wasn’t too bad. Here, at least we have an ensuite (own bathroom w/shower). For dinner, we ran out to get Indian food, and then madly planned our first full day here. We decided on doing 1) geyser / geothermal park, 2) hells gate geothermal park / mud / sulfur baths, and 3) traditional Maori dinner and cultural experience.
Time to take a break from journaling right now … gotta get ready for the Maori dinner.
