Waitomo Caves

Log chopping contest - who knew you had to wear white pants and a black muscle shirt?

From the Coromandel Peninsula we drove to Waitomo Caves near the eastern shore of the North Island.  As seems to be the norm for us, our first night of camping involved a tremendous thunderstorm before dinner followed by a 6:30 am wake up call by chainsaw.  At first we thought they were getting ready for a resumption of the logging contest from the day before, but it turned out they had just decided they should take down a hazardous tree early in the morning on a Sunday.  We have noticed that there are not many churches in NZ towns so far.

Turns out this weekend is another long weekend to celebrate Waitangi Day, the signing of a treaty between the Maori and the British.  This treaty is still seemingly enforced in that the Pacific Trade Agreement has been in dispute in the editorials because the treaty (and therefore the Maori) are not explicitly mentioned in the treaty.  We get the impression the Waitangi treaty says something about Maori businesses/farms being given some priority treatment.

Waitomo was high on my list of must see places because it is the place to see glow worms, in fact the larvae of an insect.  Our guide says ‘glow maggots’ just would not have brought in the same tourist base.  We did a tour with Spellbound because their max is 12 people/tour.  They have exclusive rights to use parts of 2 caves on private land.  Our group consisted of a couple from Vancouver, an Asian couple, a German couple, and 6 people from a hop on hop off bus tour company called Stray Bus, most of whom seemed to be from Europe. 

Our guide was a local from a family of 14 whom own an 800 acre farm in the area.    He had worked a lot of jobs including uprooting or cutting thistle on a sheep farm.   Then he worked as a truck driver before working as a guide.  He said the farmers had a tough time after the European Union formed because they couldn’t sell as much to Europe any more.  And in his words, in the 80s, “half the world became vegetarian and the other half ate only synthetic food”.  So when a farmer discovered he owned a great cave on his land he saw a good business opportunity.

glowworm threads

Glowworms (photo from Spellbound)

Eel attracted by pieces of a leftover meat pie

The first cave we went in to had a large glowworm population and river running through the cave (although we learned later that they artificially keep the water level high in the summer so they can continue rafting through part of the cave).  You walk through about half the cave on cement walkways and are pulled through the second half on a rubber raft.  The glowworms really are a sublime experience.  In total darkness they let off enough light to faintly see the white hard hats the people around you are wearing.  The ceiling is illuminated with greenish-blue pinpoints of light, something akin to LED lighting, reflected in the water below. 

In fact the larvae have a glowing tip on their rear ends which they can turn on or off.  When on, they hope to attract prey.  The build a silken cocoon and trail sticky threads that bead up with dew.  Flying insects get attracted to the light and caught in the sticky threads.  The larvae wind up the thread and eat the caught insect.  They will eat adult glowworms and other smaller glowworm larvae too.

Moa bones

After tea and cookies, we went to the second cave where there are few glowworms but more cave formations such as stalactites and stalagmites and cave coral.  There are sink holes where plants and animals have fallen in, including the bones of one of the now extinct moas (a bird like an ostrich).  Farmers often discovered caves when one of their stock fell in, and the local caving society was essentially formed by people skilled in rescuing fallen animals according to our guide. 

Just inside the second cave

Details:.

Tented at the Waitomo Top 10 Holiday Park, very neat and clean, sites are very close to each other.  The cabins looked nice. Ate dinner at Hutu Café right next to the Holiday Park – very good dishes, local beer.  The General Store has decent snacks.