Waitomo Caves, NZ
February 7, 2023 - February 9, 2023
While visiting the Waitomo Caves area, we stayed at Woodlyn Park where you have the option to book a stay in a Hobbit house, old fighter jet, train car, or a ship. We decided on staying in the hobbit house for one night and the old fighter jet for the other night. Both were unique experiences and both were actually very comfortable!
The Waitomo Cave Village area is relatively small. There were two restaurants, Huhu Cafe and Tomo Eatery and Bar. Huhu Cafe was short staffed and the kitchen had left for the night when we tried to go there, so we ended up eating dinner at Tomo Eatery both nights. Tasty food and refreshments! They also had a General Store where we ate breakfast one morning before our Waitomo Cave Adventure.
Speaking of the Waitomo Cave Adventure, it was NUTTY! We booked through The Legendary Black Water Rafting Co and chose the only option available for that day - The Abyss. Neither of us really researched much about what we were going to do. We read that we’d be abseiling (no clue what this word meant at that moment), zip-lining, and rafting through the river to look at the Glowworms. Sounds fun! We meet at our spot at 8:30am where our two guides introduced themselves, gave us a rundown, and then told us to hop in the van where they were going to take us to their main area to get our wetsuits on. On the way over there, I said to Ben, “I sure hope these wet suits are dry when we put them on”. I HATE putting on wet clothing. Welp, they were wet (insert crying face emoji here). AND super unattractive - LOL! After getting our suites, they gave us tall white rain boots, a helmet with a light ontop of it, and rock climbing type gear to put on over our wetsuits. Ben and I are like “HMMMM are we rock climbing in the cave?”.
We hop back in the van and head to the opening of the Ruakuri Cave. Just before the opening, they had 4 totem poles set up with ropes on them. We gather around them and the guides start explaining that the only way to get in to the cave at this entrance is to abseil, which is a synonym of repelling. I’m pretty sure my eyes went super wide and jaw opened as I turn to Ben and mouth “HOLY SH!T”. We learn and practice how to abseil for about 20 minutes and then it’s GO TIME! One guide went down first while the other guide hooked us up and sent us down in to the cave. It was WILD! You are just hanging there on a rope using your left thumb to control how much rope goes through the hooks to descend you down 70 meters (roughly 20 floors) through this TIGHT hole. After going through the tight part of the entrance, you enter the cave where it opens up and is pitch black. Water is dripping on you as you descend and you are just praying your hands have enough strength and energy to get you to the bottom. Once we neared the bottom, the tour guide helped us unhook and then we sat down with the rest of the group and waited for everyone to finish their abseiling.
We all made it! One tour guide went ahead of us to “prepare our snacks” and the other sat with us and told us the history of the Ruakuri Caves. We finish up our history lesson and start walking through the cave. The surface was super uneven, wet, and at times had very tight spaces to fit through. We come to a stop in a single file line and are asked to hook on to the rope to our right. The guide asked us to turn our head lamps off. The guide started hooking the first person up to something, asked them to sit like they were in a chair, pulled them back, and sent them off. The person started screaming and that’s when it clicked that we had arrived to the zip-lining part of the adventure! It was a short zip-line, but a unique one. Because the guide had us in the pitch black, you were zip-lining under these beautiful glowing Glowworms. After we all did the zip-lining adventure, the guides had us walk over to the ledge to have a seat while they prepared a little snack for us - hot chocolate and a chocolate chip cookie! We should have used context clues with the hot chocolate…we were about to get real wet and be real cold!
The next adventure was tubing in the cave river. The only way to get in the water was to jump off the ledge with our tubes. They had us each pick up a tube, head to the ledge with the tube behind our butts and JUMP IN! You jump in and completely get dunked under water. Of course my mouth was open and I came up coughing up that nasty, dirty river water. Did I mention how FREEZING that water was? It was so cold. I’m not sure why we even had wet suites on because water was inside every crack of my body. Once we got over the shock of coldness, the guides had us turn our head lamps on and paddle a few feet to a rope that we then pulled ourselves upriver. At times the water level was shallow, so we would hop off the tube and just walk through muddy, squishy like terrain. My mind this whole time is just wondering what kind of animals are walking along side of me. We find out that fresh water river eels are in that cave river. Here’s some info on New Zealand eels. I think I slightly died in that moment and did everything I could to pretend they weren’t in there. We take about 20 minutes to go upstream with our tubes and then stop for a little history lesson on Glowworms.
A few fun facts that we enjoyed learning are they are actually insects, not worms. They have what they call “fishing lines” that come down from their little hammock like cocoons to catch their prey. And if you make loud noises, they actually glow brighter! They think the vibration of the noise is their prey. After our history lesson, we all get on our tubes and the guide hooks each one of us up to the person in front, so we are in one long human tube chain. They ask us to turn off our head lamps and they pull us down stream while we look up at the glowworms. It was truly a magnificent sight to see!
After the relaxing float, we got to a point where we ditched our tubes and walked the rest of the way through the cave. Again, the terrain was super uneven, wet, and tight spaces were everywhere! We climbed behind a waterfall, slid down a slide, and had our last snack of hot sugar water and a chocolate bar. The exit of the cave was a different one than the one we abseiled down, so it was just a simple climb over rocks to get out. WE MADE IT!
We weren’t allowed to bring our GoPro, but the guides captured some great moments with their camera. It was nice to be able to just enjoy this adventure without having to stop every 5 minutes to take pictures and selfies (I love my selfies)!!
