Spelunk It!

We heard from Canadian Dan the day after we wrote our last update, and found out him and his friend were embarking on a two week whirlwind tour of New Zealand. We drove about an hour to Rotorua, a fairly big town (very big for New Zealand standards – 70,000 people), to meet up with them. Rotorua is a hotbed of geothermal activity. It has random hot springs, geysers, and hot pools all around it. This means it also has a deliciously eggy smell – Lonely Planet lovingly refers to it as “Sulphur City” and Kiwis call it “RotoVegas” because of how touristy the area is. This is the place to zorb (get thrown down a hill in a clear plastic bubble), and it also has skydiving and bungee jumping, though not of the calibre of Queenstown in the south island. Not to mention lots of “cultural experiences”, though some seem a tad more commercialized than others.

Even though we stayed two nights in Rotorua, the four of us (Craig, Andrea, Dan, and his pal) elected to drive west to the Waitomo Caves for what turned out to be an incredible day trip. This town has a network of hundreds of underground caves (many with underground streams) that you can do all sorts of things in, from mild walks where you stay dry to multi-hour adventures where you get wet. Guess which one we chose?

Together we did a five-hour adventure tour that involved donning a wetsuit (thick, but not quite thick enough to keep out the chill), helmet, headlamp, and boots. Our tour began with a 40 m abseil down into the caves, then a zipline in the pitch black across an underground river. From there we jumped into the river on tubes and did some “black water rafting” (so-called because it is so dark down there) where we turned off our headlamps and watched the millions of glow worms that inhabit the caves down there. It was truly a sight to see, and we had to keep reminding ourselves we were staring at glowing larvae poop and not stars.

To make our way out we spelunked through sometimes ankle-deep, sometimes waist-deep, streams that were sometimes calm, sometimes raging. We also scaled a few waterfalls while we were at it. Because, you know, why not? We finally made it, cold, dripping, and grinning ear to ear into the sunshine. The water in the caves was about 10 degrees Celsius, so by the end we were not feeling our toes or fingers very much, but hot showers and soup fixed all that.

From Rotorua we drove to Taupo, where we spend our coldest night yet – there was frost in the morning. Apparently Kiwis are a bit confused about the definition of a “waterfall”, as we did a 6 km round-trip hike to a supposed waterfall, only to find the banks of the river narrowed to form rapids with a slight change in elevation. Regardless, it got us up and moving bright and early in the morning.

Yesterday and today we have been exploring the Napier and Hastings region, known as the Hawke’s Bay wine region. Today we visited a few local wineries for tastings, including Mission Estate, the largest and oldest winery in New Zealand. We may explore a bit more tomorrow, or we may take off up the east coast. The weather has been sunny for the past two days, which means we are due for some rain. Usually our plans are weather-dependent, especially when it comes to tramps.

Here are some pictures from our adventure in the Waitomo Caves. Enjoy!