Waitomo Caves

Our first activity in New Zealand was a visit to the Waitomo caves. The limestone in this area has been riddled by millions of years of rain to create kilometers of caves. The landscape was beautiful, as was the river that ran into the cave.

We enter the caves (above) all wearing helmets and lights. (below)

We walked several hundred yards into the cave, along a river, before finding the main feature of our "black water (cave) rafting" adventure - glow worms! Once far enough into the cave to be free of light we found the ceiling covered with millions of tiny threads. (Above) The sticky threads were spun by worms to capture insects flying through the caves. Once we turned out the lights we discovered each of the millions of worms had a tiny neon green light at one end, much like a firefly but smaller, that was used to help attract insects. With the lights out and the roof of the cave aglow with tiny lights we boarded a ten person raft. Our guide, Angus, used a rope to pull the raft several hundred yards deeper into the cave. We stopped just short of the roar of a waterfall he assured us we would not go over! With no more light than that provided by the glow worms we got out of the raft and walked a final hundred yards our so into the cave to admire a particularly dense colony of glow worms in a small chamber. (below, this picture pinched from Black Water Raftings web site) After five minutes of glow worm contemplation, punctuated by the occasional "Can we go now?", we returned to the raft. Angus let the kids take turns pulling the raft along by the overhead ropes strung in the cave. Angus was nice enough to take the below picture of us on the hike out. (two down) Afterwards, Angus served us all coffee, Milo (hot chocolate) and cave cookies. (bottom)

You can visit Black Water Rafting at
www.blackwaterrafting.co.nz

Last revised 2/27/2003 waiting on QF25 for customs in LAX
URL http://www.flyian.net/family/oworld/waitomo.htm