We said a fond farewell to our luxurious Hobbit house, and drove the short distance into Waitomo. As we had an hour to kill before our tour started we took Tracy to see the Shearing Shed, and its famous fluffy bunnies! As some of you may remember from our earlier visit, these bunnies are sheared for their angora hair. Unfortunately, the shearing today was not until 12:45pm, so we would miss the event.
A quick coffee later and we were at the ‘Spellbound’ tour office meeting our guide for the next 3 and a half hours. Our small group hopped in the van and we were driven the short distance out to the cave mouth, on private land out in the hills and valleys.
We jumped out the van and walked down into the valley, stopping at the point where the stream disappeared into the cave. It was a damp morning, and the dark cave mouth cast an eerie sight.
We were given safety helmets, with head torches and started our walk into the Mangawhitikau cave. As we went deeper into the cave, the natural daylight disappeared and we were left with only the small light from our head torches to guide the way.
We stopped when the path went no further, and a boat stood in front of us on the stream.
It was here that we would have our first encounter with glow worms today. As we turned our head torches off and stood in complete darkness our eyes slowly adjusted and we could see hundreds of tiny lights.
Our guide talked us through the ins and outs of these little creatures, and then we flicked our lights back on and jumped in the raft. As we set off along the stream, we were once again asked to turn our head torches off. We travelled along the stream looking up at the hundreds of thousands of glow worms on the cave roof. As our eyes adjusted we could make out the shape of the cave, and the fact that there was a waterfall in front of us! Luckily we stopped just in front of it, and spent 20 minutes sat in the dark admiring the glow from the glow worms.
We were then pulled backwards along the stream and jumped out of the raft where we had originally got in. This time however, we disembarked the raft, and left the cave with no lights….as our eyes had adjusted to night vision we could make out enough to see where we were going.
Out of the cave we stopped at a small hut for a coffee and biscuit, and Tracy was treated to her first ‘long drop’ toilet!
Our next cave was called Te Ana o Te Atua (The Cave of the Spirit), which is known as Dr Thomson’s ‘bone yard tour’, as he was the first European to visit the caves in Waitomo in 1849 when he came looking for the extinct Moa bones.
We spent an hour walking through the cave, admiring the stalactites, stalagmites and many other unusual rock formations.
We were even treated to seeing some thousand year old moa bones, that had been found in the cave.
After a thorough exploration we left the cave and rode back into Waitomo town. We had a quick bite to eat and as time was creeping away we started our journey north to Auckland.
The 200kms drive flew by and before long we were joining NZ’s only 4 lane motorway with hundreds of other cars, and entering the big city! We arrived at the City Lodge at 6pm and after checking-in we chilled out for the night in our room.
No comments:
Post a Comment