We were awoken early by the clambering of the YWCA cleaning lady who was doing a complete cleaning overhaul on the kitchen across the hall. I used the remainder of the free wifi the YWCA had given me sending emails to my family before packing up my stuff. We had about an hour drive to Waitomo so we stopped to get some coffee before hitting the road. We still can't get a cup of drip coffee, they only have espresso. We have been ordering the "tall black" which is basically just two shots of espresso with a little water but today I got a "tall mac" which also has a little bit of frothy milk. The ride down to Waitomo was pretty easy so on the way, we consulted the Lonely Planet to decide which cave was the best one to visit. We decided to go on a tour called "Spellbound" because it seemed to be the best deal. We had been hoping to do a morning tour so that we could drive the two hours to Rotorua afterwards and still arrive at an early enough time to get a room (in NZ no one works at the hostels after 8:00pm which is very different from what we'd be used to in Central and South America where you can check in 24 hours a day). Unfortunately the only tour that they had available was the 2:00pm tour so as we stood around and discussed our options, the booking lady told us that three people had not shown up for the 11:00am tour so we could take their spots if we wanted to. That was prefect since it was 11:00am then, so we piled into the van and headed toward the caves.
The first cave we visited was a dry cave which reminded us a lot of Kartchner Caverns. There weren't any glow worms in that cave because it wasn't humid enough but I always like looking at cave formations. It's so crazy that small drops of water can create a stalagmite or stalagtite over thousands of years. There were also a lot of bones in the caves of animals who had fallen through the sink holes above and died inside. There was a Moa skeleton, which is a now extinct giant bird that use to live in New Zealand.
We then toured the other cave which had a river passing through it. The river made it much more humid in the cave and also acted as a food source for the glow worms since insects were brought into the cave by the river and but then were attracted by the glow worm lights in the dark.
The worms spin dozens of little threads which hang down from where they are attached to the ceiling. The threads are sticky and when a insect flies into them they get caught in them and the worm reals them up and eats them. The worm only has luminescence in a small part of their tail which is enough to lure in their prey.
We walked through the cave to the wide part of the river where we got into an inflatable raft. Our guide pulled us silently up and down the river as we looked up at the thousands of glow worms above us. He would sometimes make a loud clapping sound which the glow worms responded to and glowed even brighter. I was in awe of how it looked. It was like looking at a brilliant night sky with thousands of stars.
Sadly, we were finally done with looking at glow worms and headed out of the caves and back to our car. From Waitomo, we made the two hour drive to Rotorua. I had looked into a hostel called the "Funky Green Voyager" and when we arrived, they had space for us in a four person dorm. It was a really friendly hostel with nice facilities and free parking so I was happy to stay there. You had to pay $5 for 500mB of internet, so we decided to go use McDonald's free Internet in protest. We looked up a few things to do in town and I signed up for sledging the following morning (like white water rafting with just your body, no raft). We then headed to the grocery store to pick up some things to make dinner and hung out at the hostel the rest of the night, getting to know our fellow travelers.
Posted with Blogsy
No comments:
Post a Comment