After another surprisingly good sleep (and a rather...bracing...shower) we headed off to the Waitomo Caves, travel sickness in full force again.
Waitomo (wai meaning water, tomo meaning sinkhole) is a village with a population of 41, and home to an extensive cave system. The area, made predominately of limestone, lies on a fault line, and you can see the differences in rocks on either side as you survey the scenery.
There are several companies providing tours and sports experiences in the caves, but we went for the less publicised one as it provided smaller group sizes and more time in the glowworm cave.
Our tour started with a nausea-inducing drive to the first cave. Our guide was a very nice man called Norm, and he provided us with lots of information about the surrounding area and the history of the caves. He also named us 'Team Doc', which was nice.
The first cave we went to was called 'Te Ana o te Atua' ('The Cave of the Spirit), and had some pretty spectacular stalactites/mites etc.
Norm was very informed and told us about the different processes that led to the formations. We also saw bones of animals that had died in the cave (when they set up the tours they didn't change anything about the caves, only installed a walkway), including a skeleton of a moa, a giant flightless bird that was hunted to extinction by the Maori people centuries ago.
This is Team Doc in the first cave:
The real excitement, however, was in the next cave. After a cup of coffee and some tasty biscuits, we were given helmets with lights on the front, and led into the next cave. This was a bit scary, as we kept the lights off for most of it to develop our night vision. This was because 10 minutes into the cave was a boat, which took us on a voyage through a passage full of glowworms.
The glowworms, or Arachnocampa, are the larvae of a fungus gnat. After hatching from the egg, a larva spins a nest out of silk. Then it creates up to 70 threads of silk from the nest, each around 30cm long and studded with drops of mucus. A chemical reaction in its abdomen causes the worm to glow, which attracts prey such as flies. The prey then gets caught in the strings of silk, and the worm detects where the fly is by the vibrations of the strings. It then pulls the string up and eats its prey. If food is scarce they sometimes resort to eating each other. Glowworms can only survive in places without wind (or their strings would get tangled), which is why they live in caves.
It is difficult to describe the sight of millions upon millions of little blue-white points of light on the ceiling of a cave. As our eyes adjusted to the dark more and more glow worms became apparent, and it became even more stunning.
It is very difficult to photograph glowworms; we couldn't use the flash as it would disturb our night vision, and you wouldn't have been able to see them anyway. However, the lovely tour company people emailed us some photos:
That was nice of them.
On the way out of the cave we encountered a cave weta. This is a horrific insect that looks like a spider. It was easily bigger than a acromegalic hand. I was traumatised and squealed a bit.
After the tour (which surprisingly took over three hours) we headed back to Auckland. This was the longest journey (at about 2hr 45mins) but was mostly straight roads, so I didn't feel too bad. The rest of the evening was spent moaning about the scent of sulphur and hangi lingering in our clothes.
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