Tina, a Lucida colleague of Jem’s, recommended we go to a place called Waitomo Caves, aka the Glowworm Caves, as one of the ‘must-do’ activities of NZ. This is an area of the central North Island, which on the surface is normal pasture land, but is actually riddled with caves, caverns and tunnels – 307 at last count. They are populated by a species of glowworm native to the dark, shady and damp places of New Zealand and Australia. The caves themselves are filled with stalagmites, stalactites and all manner of rock formations created from water and acid erosion. We book our accommodation (Big Bird B&B, home of Ostriches!) and a tour of the caves. Looking at the choices of activities abseiling, black water rafting, caving and climbing and not being able to choose we decide on a tour that does them all. Arriving at the tour operators we meet our tour guide Mike, and tour companions four young Irish people, two of whom live in Auckland.
Kitted out in (smelly) wetsuits and wellies (with drain hole in the soles) we head for the caves. First there is an abseil of 30 meters into a limestone cavern then we spend 3.5 hours exploring the tunnel system trying our hand at caving and climbing in the dark, and wading through the underground river that has formed this cave system (6.5 Kilometres end-to-end). Additional company is provided by eels and water spiders and the ubiquitous glowworms overhead. There are so many glowworms in the caves that the place never seems properly dark. This is no exaggeration – looking up in the dark cavern the roof looks like a night sky of eerily blue/green stars. It all looks amazing and other worldly. This opinion is not shared by one of the Irish girls, however, it’s way too dark if you don’t like the dark, and that’s not to mention eels, spiders and the thought of whatever else might be in the darkness. Truly enough to scare yourself if you have a mind to. Indeed the fact that the glowworms are not worms but a large maggots does little to add to the glamour of the experience or the comfort of the young Irish lady. Funny they don’t mention this in the marketing! We finish our experience with a 30-metre rock climb back out of the cavern to daylight and the sheep grazing all around. A truly awesome and really fun afternoon. Thanks Tina – an excellent recommendation and definitely our highlight this week.
Other than the caves, Waitomo doesn’t have too much to offer. However, there are two things worth mentioning. We visit a bird park and get our first glance of the New Zealand Kiwi! This is actually a great experience. The Kiwi is a pretty big bird (the size of a very large chicken) and is of course flightless, with no wings visisble at all. This makes it look extremely odd as it struts around with its long beak poking into the ground looking for grubs. The population has hit dangerously low levels (mainly because it can’t fly away from anything) and there is a significant campaign of protection underway to get this native bird’s levels back up. The second activity worth mentioning was our visit to an ‘angora rabbit shearing shed’! This was hilarious. As the pics show they string up the poor rabbits, front and rear, in what looks like a medieval torture rack before shearing off its fur. In reality, they have to shear them every three months or the rabbit would die of heat exhaustion, it’s conducted by a member of the SPCA (equiv. to RSPCA) and they seem to be very relaxed and almost enjoy the experience. At the end, we understand why. When the male rabbits have been clipped, they are allowed to go off and do bunny things with the girls, which they’re not allowed to do when they’re hairy!!
On returning to Taupo, the weather was a little better and we managed to get in a number of lake-based activities that had eluded us previously. It’s a truly stunning lake and well worth a visit.
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