Worms Light the Way

We stayed in Waitomo for four nights and although rural there was so much to do!  The first day we went down the street to the Marokopa waterfall, well maybe a little further it was 30mins away.  The lookout platform at the trail end was broken so we hiked through down to the waterfall loosing our shoes in the mud and having a fantastic time!  In the heat of the day we were getting cold with mist poring off the cliff. After skipping from rock to rock we hung out for a while further downstream and washed out our shoes.  The hike to the waterfall and the waterfall itself were beautiful and bigger than expected! 

 

After the waterfall we headed back toward our holiday park and stopped to hike a small cave, Pirpiri Cave.  Unfortunately, it was wet inside and Zane slipped in the cave and toppled down a few stairs. It scared the hell out of us.  He is fine but decided he didn't like the cave much after that.  

A little further from the cave, we stopped at the Mangapohue natural bridge trailhead and walked along platforms built into the rock wall to this beautiful rock formation.  Zane and Nicole collected all of the different flowers along the way and found little tiny 'secret' waterfalls coming out of the rock face. I was getting frustrated at Z's lack of a good smile while taking pictures and happened to ruin a few myself.

The holiday park we were staying had a great pool and hot tub with a playground right next to it.  We met a few families - a couple from Germany and the UK who had moved to Rotorua three years prior.  Nicole was really interested in talking to them about the differences in the education systems and medicine of the countries they've lived. He was an anesthesiologist and by the way, he uses alcohol swabs when he puts in IVs. Dennis, their 7 year old son, and Zane were fast friends.  There was only one restaurant/bar in town, the lamb shank and DIY lamb kit that you cooked on a hot stone delivered to your table were both excellent. Dennis and Zane 'played' pool and shut down the restaurant two nights in a row.

We went through two more caves, both guided in tour groups. The first (Waitomo Cave (map)) through a cave that had some neat formations, at the end you board a small boat and the guide silently pulls you through the dark using unseen ropes as you look up to see the glowworms on the ceiling. In the dark they emit a blue light from one end to attract other flying insects. Their food is trapped in a sticky silky thread they lower down a few inches from where they are attached to the ceiling. After feeding for ~9 months they pull up their silk thread and use it to build a cocoon around themselves.  They hatch as small mosquito like flies but without a mouth or digestive system. They procreate and die a few days from first flight. They either starve to death or fly into another glowworm thread to be cannibalized. Lights off = super cool, lights on = super gross.

The Ruakuri Cave (map) was the other we visited and was very long, total length is around 4 km but the tour only does ~1km of it. It carves a hole much deeper into the hillside and was much better in our opinion to the Waitomo cave because it also has glowworms.  It was an hour and a half tour and had a lot of beautiful well lit rock formations. You could also see another tour of people at some places below us getting on inter-tubes to float the river that carved the cave.  Next time Nicole wants to go ab-sailing into the cave and tubing through it.   Unfortunately, Zane was too young to do it this trip.  Zane had lots more pool action with his buddy for the rest of the day. Nicole spent some time at a small farm connected to the holiday park we were staying at to feed goats, cows, two huge pigs, sheep and... well, she kept her distance from the alpacas but said hi anyway. It's fun seeing how much she loves animals.