20170128: Waitomo Glow Worm Caves and Hobbiton

Saturday, January 28, 2017

Waitomo Glow Worm Caves & Hobbiton

We had to get up early for our pickup at the curb in front of our hotel for an excursion booked through Viator to see the Waitomo Glow Worms Caves and Hobbiton. The tour operator was called Head-First Travel, and they picked us up in a 12 passenger Toyota van that was already loaded with 9 passengers. Janet got to ride shotgun, while Ben rode in back with 5 Korean and two South American women. The driver was a Maori woman, and she made it a point to let Ben know he was the sole male in the van.

It was a 2-1/2 hr drive to get to the Waitomo Glow Worm caves from Auckland. It doesn't seem like that takes as long to get from Sea-Tac to Whidbey Island, but it does. Much of what we drove through was hills covered with sheep and cattle.

Glow worms are actually larval flies with an interesting biology. The female lays clutches of 20-50 eggs on the ceiling of dark caves, though which rivers flow. The first larva to hatch starts its life off by eating its brothers and sisters. It then fishes from the ceiling of the cave by dangling long snares of silk coated with sticky saliva, using bioluminescence within its body to act as bait. Insects that are swept into the caves with the river water fly up to the tiny spots of light, which in a pitch black cave, look like a starry sky filled with millions of stars. These insects get caught in the threads, and are reeled up and eaten, kind of like cave jellyfish. It takes 6-12 months for them to mature into flies. The adult flies have no digestive system, and live for just a day or two with the singular mission of mating and laying more eggs to start the cycle over.

We visited 3 caves. The first was the Waitomo Glow Worm cave. This cave is a limestone cave with typical limestone formations, and a slow running river flows through it. They take you into the darkness, and then load people up on boats. The guides then pull the boats through a pitch black grotto using a network of ropes to reveal what looks like a sky filled with millions of stars. The stalagmites and other anomalies in the cave ceilings create dark areas between stars, so it looks like you are looking through a tree canopy at a star filled sky. It is pretty amazing to see, and it's hard to believe what you are seeing. It can easily be described as magical. The first person to have floated into these caves and saw we were seeing must have been truly flabbergasted. You aren't allowed to take any photos or videos in the Waitomo cave, but when you start your tour, they take a picture of you in front of a green screen, and are happy to sell you a booklet with you photoshopped into pictures of the caves for $35. We'll just keep those memories in our heads.

The second cave was the Ruakari cave. This cave has a river rushing though it, and it is most noted for what they call Blackwater adventures, where they put people in wetsuits, and then they go through the caves on inner tubes, or boogie boards, with hard hats and headlamps. One of the guides explained that participants are taken to an open part of the river where they have to practice the technique of plunging blindly, rear-end first into the river with their inner tubes. Once they are proficient, they take them to the start of the cave, lead them down to the river, shut off the lights, and make everyone take that plunge of faith in absolute darkness into the river. As exciting as that sounds, we chose to do a more pedestrian and drier foot tour. This cave tour was a nice compliment to the Waitomo cave because it did allow photography and had similar limestone cave features, including glow worms. We did get to see the glow worms up close when the guide shined a flashlight so you could clearly see the threads that they use to capture their prey. Seeing the actual worms was trickier, but they seem to suspend themselves from the cave ceiling in a hammock, and look like smooth worms about 2cm in length. When she turns off the flashlight, you can see them bioluminescence originates from somewhere in the middle of the body. They don't look the least bit scary, but they are nearly impossible to get a good photograph of using just an iPhone camera. Seeing them against the background of the limestone is like spotting Waldo. There were several areas where you could see the blackwater adventurers passing below in the river. Surprisingly, the 5 Korean women in our van had signed up for the Blackwater adventure. During the entire drive out, they either slept, or were putting on makeup and taking selfies of each other. After the adventure, the were right back to sleeping and putting on make-up in the van.

The third cave was the Aranui cave, supposedly discovered when a Maori hunter's dog chased a large pig into a hole in the ground. This cave is supposedly larger but of the 3 caves we saw, we would skip this one because you had to climb up at least 400ft in altitude along a steep path and then stairs to get to the entrance. This cave is a dry cave, so there are no glow worms, but it does have giant cricket-like bugs called wetas near the entrance to creep you out. This cave also had lots of stairs going up and down. It was truly amazing how the Waitomo and Ruakuri caves were so well developed with walkways, LED lighting and handrails. They were nearly ADA accessible except that if your scooter battery died in there, you'd really be in trouble, and you had to climb into a boat in darkness to see the glow worm grotto in the Waitomo cave. By the time we got the Aranui cave, we were pretty much "Caved out". So we would recommend future travelers to see the Waitomo and Raukuri caves, but skip the Aranui.

We had booked the 3 cave tour package through Viator, and while the tour operator also offered options to see Rotorua and Hobbiton, we were not interested in touring a movie set. However, they pretty much force you to see it because it is a part of any tour package you can buy. 

Seeing the Shire, and tiny hobbit houses was cute, but it's beyond me how they are going to be able to keep pumping tourists through this site for much longer, unless Peter Jackson comes up with an ongoing string of Hobbit and Lord of the Rings derivatives. It was impressive how they had a continuous string of huge Hobbiton tour buses going in and out of a very busy visitor center. 

They do take care to maintain the Shire in a pristine state with fresh hobbit clothes on the clothes lines, and meticulously maintained gardens and lawns. We did get to visit the Green Dragon pub at the end of the tour and enjoyed a beer. Janet even got to have a taste of "Ginger Beer", which turned out to be "Ginger Ale". She finished off with a stout, while I enjoyed an IPA.

The drive back was just as long as the drive out, but much of it was on motorways with the same countryside, so we got a bit of sleep, except perhaps for Janet, who rode shotgun he whole way. Our driver drove like a true Maori warrior, tailgating, speeding, and passing on curves. We were periodically awakened by a sudden slamming on of the brakes. It must have been killing Janet the whole time to not be shouting at the driver. Because they drive on the left, Janet also was quite sure we'd be killed by all these people on the wrong side of the road every time we went through an intersection. This reinforced the wisdom of us booking a guided tour, instead of driving a rental car.

It seems Janet has come down with the cold that Jack and Sharon picked up, so as soon as we got back to the hotel, she showered and crawled into bed. We have another full day in Auckland with nothing planned so far tomorrow. Then we fly out on the 30th to travel back in time to arrive in the US nearly the same time we leave New Zealand.