Early Bird Gets the Glowworm

This was such a crazy goofy thing.

Okay! So Tuesday I hopped in my van and drove down to Waitomo Glowworm Caves, an experience I had read about in my Fodor's travel book, of which I am a loyal follower. I really wanted the full experience, and signed up for a five hour cave tour.

Like every single adventure guide you've ever had, our guides, Katy and Harry, were the coolest. Our group of eight met at the Legendary Black Water Rafting Company, to literally get suited up. This was probably only of the only activities I've done where I felt thankful for every piece of gear I had on. You know how sometimes you go ziplining, and they make you wear a helmet and you're like, sure, for liability, but I look so stupid. Well if I hadn't had this helmet on I would've bashed my little noggin in on some cave rocks.

We each got full wetsuits, some really sexy knee-high rubber boots and booties, helmets and harnesses. The tour had a couple parts, including the main descent into the cave via abseil, a short zip line into the main chamber, tubing around the glow worm channels, and then the climb out of the cave. Literally how crazy is that!!

So first up, our 35 meter descent. An abseil is a little friction based device, and we used this to control our drop. I got to be the lucky first person into the cave, and honestly the initial free-suspension over the pitch black cave mouth was a little jarring. Nothing but me and my little paws to let me down into that cave. But, the abseil was super easy to use and I dropped in without a problem. And it was cool because I got to look at some little worms while everyone else was coming in.

The zip line was super fun. We all got to turn our headlights off and zip down by glow-light into the largest, main chamber. I was the only person by myself, so Harry and Katy often let me lead, and honestly it was so much fun. After zip lining, we had a little hot chocolate break before jumping into the water. Up until this point the wet suit had been ridiculously clumsy, and I thought about asking to leave the jacket behind. Because obviously, I know everything and sure I'll be warm enough in the cave. We jumped from the zip line landing into the cave water (and our tubes) and yeah, it was really cold water. The jacket was very necessary. Who ever could've anticipated that?

The actual tubing part was very calm. We obviously couldn't bring in any cameras or devices, so I'll add some more photos from the little water-proof camera the guides had, but I'd also recommend googling some pictures of the glow worms! We paddled deeper into one of the cave channels for about 20 minutes, and then were able to all turn our headlights off and see the worms come out in style. Katy and Harry let us know that they glow to attract food, and they live in their worm state for several months before hatching into fruit flies. Kind of a bummer, because a glow worm is way cooler than a fruit fly. I much prefer the Maori interpretation that the worms are resting ancestral spirits. Harry pulled us all through the dark caves by glow-light for a while, all of us relaxing in a little tube chain. It was otherworldly down there. The passages were very calm, but also eerie, and I'm glad I didn't know if anything was living in those cave waters.

The climb out of the caves was the longest, and most difficult part. We had a wonderful group potty break first, and aside from the squeeze out of the wetsuit, a cave pee is a very nice experience. We navigated our way to a different opening we could exit on foot, and this included several scrambles and tight squeezes. At one point the path narrowed so much I turned to Katy to ask here where the heck we were going. She cheerfully responded, "Oh, right down there!" and pointed to a horizontal opening by my knees. Water was pouring out from between the rocks, and clearly we were planning to trek upstream. I really commend Katy and Harry for not giving us any time to over think those tight squeezes. I got down on my belly and squirmed my way to the other side, again thankful for my helmet. We also climbed directly into two water falls to continue our ascent, which was pretty cool. Harry helped boost most of us up, and indicated all the foot holds for our clumsy rubber boots. I seriously can't imagine how the first people to find these caves felt scrambling around all these passages!

We were out in no time, and all got hot showers back at the facility. Those showers were magnificent after more than three hours in cave water.

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hehehe. me in the caves and all my gear!