Day 152: Waitomo Caves, Otorohanga, Marokopa Falls

For our Waitomo adventures, we ended up driving over to the place with the terrifying dead-body-on-a-fence,-oh-wait,-it's-just-a-TERRIFYING-WETSUIT,-THANKS-GUYS, which was much closer to the hostel in the light of day than when illuminated by high beam. Upon arriving, we were then transferred to a hilariously awful van, which then took us up some hills, past some sheep, through PRIVATE PROPERTY fences, and then finally dumped us at a strange little shack, wherein a tiny lady forced us into wetsuits and gumboots.

Then, we clomped our way down to the caves, probably more attractive than any humans have the right to be.

The day began with a 27 meter abseil down into the caves. The thing about caves that I always tend to forget is that they are not particularly glamourous from the outside. In this case, the cave system that we would be exploring looked like a giant crack in the world, surrounded by lush furns and, a little further out, farmland.

That being said, as we each abseiled down, the view changed dramatically. There was a point where you could look straight ahead and see the light coming down into the cave in almost tangible lines. Between the high arching walls of the cavern and the tinted light, it looked like a cathedral.

Granted, then you landed in shin deep water, and the solemnity was a tad lost.

As our group of six finally made it over, we learned that our timing was, yet again, amazing. The day before, some tours had been canceled because of the recent rains. Apparently some of the caves had flooded and it was unsafe for groups to go in. For us, it meant that the waters were about twice as high as they normally were, and the currents much faster. There were points where I was sure that my feet were going to be kicked out from beneath me, and it really colored the experience in a way that calm waters wouldn't. I do not tend towards wild adventuring, so wading through the cold and rapid water and pressing up against the sharp limestone was genuinely enlightening.

For the most part, I am not sure if I would pick up spelunking as a relaxing weekend activity, but we did get to see things that made me understand, at least in part, why someone would strap a lamp to their head and explore the dark unknown.

One of those things were the glow worm caves, which were genuinely magical. We were told to turn off our headlamps, and, one by one, we clicked them off until the only source of light was the starscape of glowworms above us. It's hard to describe the way bioluminescence looks, the difference between that and stars, that and ordinary light. Up close, they are tiny, the entire span of their movement the length of a match, but en masse they are so bright. Countless little larvae, living their dark little lives.

We ended up doing a lot of everything while down there, exploring the caves, climbing through some pretty nervewrackingly tight spots, black water rafting (which is essentially riding an inner tube down the subterranean rapids), and then ending the day with a 20m rock climb back out of the cave.

After the day's adventures, we decided to go to the nearby town of Otorohanga for a late midafternoon meal at the Thirsty Weta. Yum.

An unfortunate encounter with the kiwi of Otorohanga

Claire and I also decided that we needed to introduce my siblings to some delicious New Zealand ice cream and bought a tub of Rush Munro's feijoa ice cream. This was, in theory, an excellent idea. However, when put in conjunction with our plan to go to the gorgeous Marokopa Falls down the road, it resulted in a strange and probably permanent association of flavour and place. We neglected to take into consideration how soft the ice cream was and how quickly it melts in the heat, so everyone in Team Zigfrond was eating spoonfuls of ice cream as we hurtled down the road towards the Falls. Just thinking back to the falls fills me with a phantom taste of feijoa and sense memory of the awkwardness of being spoonfed melty ice cream while driving. I am happy to report, though, that both the falls and the ice cream lived up to expectations. (In all seriousness, the falls were gorgeous. This country really does spectacular scenery.)

Gorgeous. And the falls aren't bad either.

By the end of the day, we were all pretty tired and came back to the hostel for an evening of twilight trampolining and dinner.