Sunday - caves and glow worms

Today we explored part of the Waitomo cave system with a guide from Kiwi Caving. We arrived at their office just before 9 am with swim costume, towel and spare socks in hand.

Firstly the six in our party were driven about 15 mins to a small building in a field where we changed into our costumes, full wet suit gear and a climbing harness. Then it was another 2 mins drive to the entrance of the cave.

This part of the system is 8 km long, though we only did a small section of that. We abseiled down 30m to the cave floor where we waited in about 20cm of water for the whole party to descend. Danny, our guide (from Somerset in the UK) was very good at teaching us how to use the equipment, and how to be safe. Mick and I were impressed at the improved abseiling gear from when we had last done some (about 40 years ago, so maybe it wasn't too surprising).

Danny then took us along a downstream section of the complex and took us through a small hole at the side of the passage. One of the best moments was when we were completely out of sight of the entrance and all switched our lamps off. The glow worms were fantastic, hundreds on the roof of the cave, each dangling down a series of small sticky lines to try and catch any passing gnats or other small insects. It was like seeing a perfect starry night, except that all the glow worms were of a similar brightness.

Danny showed us a resident eel in that section, nicknamed Gollum. It was possible to stroke him behind the head, and he seemed totally unafraid (or possibly unaware) or us. Eels are weird, they hunt in the dark, live in the water, but come out of the water to sleep.

Moving downstream we picked up a rubber tyre ring each, then floated in a convey further down the river. We climbed through some more small gaps, and slid down a short hole arms first. We saw more glow worms, then all had a hot drink and some chocolate to stave off the cold. More floating in the tyres (there was very little water in the caves today) then we made our way back to the entrance.

To get out of the cave we had to climb up a fairly steep (nearly vertical) section of rock, though very securely attached to a safety line. The rocks in the whole area are karst, a type of limestone layered with mud, which means they often look more like man made bricks than natural rocks. It also means plenty of foot and hand holds for climbing.

Back at the office at about 1.45 we were given fresh rolls and tomato soup whilst we looked at the photos Danny had taken during our trip. We bought a copy, but at the moment are having problems loading the pictures onto my iPad ready for uploading onto the blog. I'll try to add them soon!

After a coffee at a nearby cafe Mick and I went on to walk the Ruakuri Bushwalk. This was an excellent walk through bush (surprised?) and up and over a number of rocky outcrops and past caves following a steam. Another excellent DOC reserve, with several wow moments. We even saw large freshwater crayfish in the stream.

We continued driving towards the west and visited the Mangapohue Natural Bridge, then the Piripiri caves, and finally seeing the Marakopa Falls (can you see me in the photo below?), a very large waterfall. 

Dinner was back near our motel/plane, at a restaurant called Huhu, and was excellent. Since then we have been wrestling with trying to get the cave photos to be accessible on my iPad, and trying to change our plan with Vodafone as our two month deal, started when we arrived here, is about to expire. All we seem to have done so far is agree to have a new plan, thereby being suddenly cut off from our old plan, and now unable to pay anything to activate the new plan as we have no service! A visit to Vodaphone is going to have to happen tomorrow, when I might be able to upload this blog!