This day was rainy. But that didn’t worry us, as we had a plan not involving activity beneath the sky.
More like beneath the ground. 😉
On our way to the Waitomo Glowworm Caves we (as planned) passed the famous landmark of Te Puke, the Kiwi360. 🙂 The rain gave us a benevolent pause of its doings for our photoshoot…
You can also go up inside it AND I have never ever seen the golden side of it… 😀
Having arrived in Waitomo, we booked tickets for the Black Water Rafting and the famous Waitomo Cave.
Those who still haven’t googled for Waitomo, please do that now or think of the first scenes of ‘Planet Earth: Caves’. 🙂
Inside these caves, you wouldn’t guess they exist looking from the outside, live those small larvae, who lure insects with their blueish torquoiseish light into their sticky silk strings and slowly pull them up and suck out their guts. Most cute, they are. 🙂
Unfortunately you can’t take decent pictures in there, plus it is forbidden, so there won’t be any of those in the following…
The tour around the cave involves, next to general information about it, some decent views of the ‘glowworms’ (which actually are none, just some larvae with a light in the butt) and a boat trip through the dark cave under the starry sky. So you float through darkness underneath thousands of light, which is unbelievably beautiful. A little surreal, though awsome!
The next part of our cave experience was the rafting. For both parts you pay quite some money, but you are compensated handsomely…
In a group of 12 we slipped into our wetsuits (they are not only called like that, they ARE already soaking wet), gumboots and torch helmets and went to a creek nearby by shuttle bus. Our guide showed us there how to use our means of transportation inside the cave, a rubber tube.
So it is winter, it is raining and you are inside a wet, though thick wetsuit. And now you jump into a river with a rubber tube, facing backwards. It began to dawn on me what was to come…
After that we went to the actual cave. After some entertaining instructions by our German guide, we slipped away into the ground…
My advise for you all: Leave the glasses if you can, as you cannot do anything about the fog on them. And go to the toilet beforehand, as only the sound of splashing water can introduce people to a raging need… 😉
We went, we waded and we swam on our tubes through the cave, which was pretty much flooded thanks to the rain and saw things and did things.
We saw those hungry light-up-larvae up close (I even dared to touch their sticks strings, which wasn’t as spectacular, BUT I did it.) and looked at bizarre stalactites and jumped down small waterfalls backwards multiple times. Wet to the bone we stepped outside in the end and faced the next challenge: Getting out of the wetsuit. 😀
Though the hot shower and even hotter soup next to bagels made us forget the struggle quite quickly…
Today I think back and can only say that the dreamlike memories are all true…
All exhausted we went back to our stay in Te Kuiti and rewarded ourselves with a healthy night’s sleep…
We saw: Kiwi360 in Te Puke, the Glowworm Caves and another cave from the very up closest…
