The Waitomo Glow-worm Caves were our adventure destination
for Saturday. The tour began with our tour guides fitting us for wet suits,
telling me “easy tiger, it’s a dangerous world out there” when I tripped, and
then making us take ridiculous pictures before we climbed in a van much like
Hertzie to head down to the caves.
The beginning of the Black Abyss tour that we did involves
abseiling down 35 meters and apparently it’s one of the most vertical abseiling
locations in the world. We had about ten minutes of a “how to abseil” lesson
before we actual did it. As we lowered ourselves down one at a time, we each
had to pass through the throat of the opening, where the walls come in to form
a rather small hole (we were told “if you can fit in a wetsuit, you can fit
through”). The cave then opens up
to a much wider room where we eventually landed and were unhooked by one of the
guides. As we waited for the rest of the group to abseil down, we laid on the
rocks and got our first few of the glow-worms that live in the cave.
The next big step was to zip line down to the next level of the cave. The guides think it’s fun to turn everyone’s headlights off and smack inner tubes against the river inside of the cave while you zip line. It makes this terribly loud sound like a gunshot, but it makes the glow-worms shine a little brighter. They then had us all sit down and drink hot chocolate and eat these really sweet granola bars to get our body temperature up.
To start the “rafting” portion, we had to jump into the shallow
cavewater with our inner tubes held against our butts. The water was SO COLD,
even with a wetsuit. We floated through the cave a little bit, learned that
“glow-worms” are actually “glow-maggots” who glow because instead of pooping,
they burn off their waste as heat. Fun fact right?
The rest of the time, we mostly walked and waded through the
cave. At one point we went down a little waterslide on our stomachs and then
had a belly-flop contest. We came to another stopping point where we were given
what tasted like hot tang and pieces of Hershey’s chocolate. They also told us
that it would be a good time to take an “Adventure Pee” if we needed to go. The
Canadian lady that was on our tour took them up on it, and looking back I kind
of wish I had too. When else are you going to do that thirty-five meters
underground?
For the last bit of the tour, we got to see the eel that
lives in the cave (the only animal I saw besides the glow-worms) and climb two
small waterfalls. The guides told us exactly where to put our feet to climb it,
but I was still worried that I was going to slip or that I wouldn’t be able to
reach the right foot or hand holds. Everyone in our group managed to climb them
both without a problem, and that was basically the end of our caving
experience. After we got back to the main site and stripped off our wet-suits,
we chowed down on free bagels and tomato soup.
The whole time that I was in the cave, my headlight wasn’t
really working. To get it to work, you had to wiggle the battery and flip the
switch extra hard a few times. I could never get it working. The one thing I
kept thinking was “what did the original explorers of this cave do if their
lights went out?” I can’t imagine being stuck in cave with no way to see. I
have a lot more respect for people who venture into unexplored caves after this
experience. I also think they probably have a few screws loose, but if it weren’t
for those loose screws I would have had a much less eventful weekend. 
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