Waitomo: Glow Worm Caves

Glow Worms!!

We went spelunking on Sunday. It was wild. Warning: this post is kind of gross and scary all at the same time.

In New Zealand, there is a fly (called a fungus gnat, or something like arachne-campo-luminosa) which lives in deep caves, and only lives for about three days once it becomes an adult. The larval stage lasts much, much longer. As larvae, they dangle webs from the ceiling of caves, glowing in the dark to attract prey. In the darkness of the caves, the glow of the worms mimics a starry night. Touring the caves to see the glow worms is a popular activity in various parts of New Zealand. It is hard to believe that a worm (in reality a maggot) has caused its own tourist industry.

Anyway, onto the scary-fun part. We decided to go with a company called Black Water Rafting. They do a few different types of trips at varying levels of cost/time/adrenalin requirements/etc. The "Black Abyss Tour" was for about 5 hours, and we'd definitely recommend this trip to anyone. We had such a spectacular time, we almost went again right on the spot.

Our guides, Andy and Simon, were knowledgeable and friendly. They were very good about leading us while letting us feel that we did some exploring on our own, in the dark. By the way, it was truly dark - we were about 30 to 50 meters (90 to 150 feet) below the ground. We had head lamps but from time to time they would ask us to turn them off, so we could see the worms and to get a feel for what caving was all about (Erin's interjection -- uh, dark, cold and scary).

Our group had some great folks who contributed to the fun. It would have been much less exciting if we would have had to coax or prod along a co-caver. To John & Christie, Jonathon, and Sam - we hope the rest of your NZ adventures are as fun and exciting as today was.


Here's a quick run-down of how the trip went. Take a look at the photos for more fun.
- we dressed up in super-sexy wet suits, shorts, and harnesses

- we got a short training in rappelling
- we hooked up our harnesses to a rope, and lowered ourselves down 90 feet to the cave floor

- we walked deeper into the caves to escape the daylight
- we hooked up to a zip-line, turned off our head lamps, and took a ride of indeterminable length to a landing above the underground river
- we had a much needed coffee break, coffee, tea and cave cookie provided

- we grabbed onto an inner tube, and jumped about 10 feet off the ledge into a frigid, black underground river (Erin's lack of experience with tubing quickly became evident. She was the only one to execute an upside down landing in said frigid, black water. Those water safety courses finally came into use!)
- we floated upstream (with our lights out), seeing lots of glow worms along the ceiling (Joey, at the tail-end of the convoy, let go of the rope and had to be rescued by his lovely wife, twice. He also serenaded the group with a slightly altered version of Jingle Bells, "floating through the caves...".)
- Simon gave us a lesson on stalactites and stalagmites as well as other cave formations
- we left our tubes and started hiking further upstream through narrow caves and waterfalls (Erin had one moment of nervousness and chose to skip one of tighter "squeezes." The rest of the team was quite nice about her anxiety and checked on her throughout the rest of the trip out, which made her even more determined not to give up on anything else!)
- to leave the caves, we actually had to climb up three waterfalls through narrow shoots, or tomo in Maori


Yes, we were cold. And, yes we got scared a little bit. It was still worth it.