Waitomo Caves

Next on our agenda was Waitomo Caves which is famous for the glow worms which live in its underground caves. The caves have a series of small rivers coursing through them which makes it ideal for the glow worms,  who need a damp environment. The whole town was built around these caves after they were discovered by two men who wondered if they could float down the river on a raft,  going in one cave and coming out another. They did , saw the glow worms and the rest is history, although I must admit it is a very small town, and what is it called , Waitomo Caves, of course. imaginative! 

There are many companies which lead tours down the caves, you can walk  through them, float down them on inner tubes (tubing) or do a combination of things including abseiling. David and I decided to do the Black Labyrinth course with The Blackwater Rafting Company, this meant we would be tubing through the tunnels, in rather fetching wetsuits. There were 7 in our group, me and David, another couple from Germany and a trio from China, a son probably in his twenties but with older parents. 

Once we were all ensconced in our wetsuits, which were already wet and a bit smelly before we put them on we were driven to a river, were we had to practise jumping in backwards clutching our inner tube rings to our bottoms. Well, this is when I started to think, "Oh dear , what am I doing." The first person to go was the youngest of the group, so really it should have been straight forward, but he plunged in with such enthusiasm he bounced back up and flipped onto his tummy. Which actually was really funny to see but didn't fill me with much confidence. Thankfully the rest of the group managed it fine, although a couple of us nearly floated down river instead of  heading to the bank,  but were caught by one of the leaders. 

We really enjoyed doing the tubing but I couldn't get the hang of just floating down the river. Everybody else managed to float down feet first, going with the flow, I either turned totally round so was going backwards or went sidewards. Going sidewards was a bit of a problem as, as you can imagine the tunnels are narrow and I kept getting wedged and when people were behind me I was causing traffic jams. Somehow I ended up at the back of the group, which I think  was deliberate on their part, so I didn't cause a blockage ! 

After a while I thought that maybe I wasn't far enough in the tube and that was why I wasn't floating in the right direction, so I forced myself further into it.  All was fine until we got to a part where we were supposed to hold onto a rope on the wall and get out of the tube before walking to the next bit, well I couldn't, the tube was well and truly wedged on. There I was bobbing about in the water like a cork, with David curled up laughing at my dilemma, to be fair I was curled up too. 

At a few sections of the caves we switched off our torches so we could see the glow worms, it was truly beautiful. In one section we all joined up, with each person holding the feet of the person behind them. As a chain we all floated down the river,  in total darkness apart from the light of the glow worms, it was magical. 

It was great fun and a wonderful experience which I would recommend to anyone who is thinking about doing it. 

That night we were staying in a hotel in the area which is supposed to be haunted, which we didn't know about until later in the evening. The hotel had a rubbish wifi signal so we were on the landing outside of our room trying to get a signal when two other guests came back in from a day out. They 

started speaking to the receptionist saying that they had heard the hotel was haunted. Through the conversation we heard that several areas of the hotel were supposed to be haunted by a few ghosts including rooms 12, 12a and 14. We were staying in room 12, so our ears really tuned in on that! Apparently a Maori princess was visiting an Army officer there and was killed by a soldier on guard duty and she was the ghost who was supposed to haunt these rooms. I have to admit that nothing happened while we were there, or if it did I slept through it. 

There are a lot of trees like these in New Zealand they remind me of Lego trees, which i always  thought were a daft shape.

They like to advertise businesses with big models, we also saw a hearing aid place with a big ear stuck to the building and an opticians with a huge pair of glasses on its roof. 

One of the mountains on North Island it had more snow on it than the ones we saw on South Islamd. 

The haunted hotel below, it was a very old fashioned hotel but the rooms were nice, there was even a bath in the room. It was a hotel with character and that includes the staff, an interesting stay.