The drive was only about 2 hours, and very picturesque with all the lush green countryside here. We got to our bed and breakfast, Waitomo Guest Lodge, and were able to check in at that early hour, which was to our benefit because they gave us the best room at the place, with a great view of the hillsides and pastures. The owner was a guy named Collin, he was very friendly and gave us an overview of everything to do in the small town, and he even went as far as to tell us which places weren’t any good, were overpriced, or had poor customer service. We took a couple hours to stroll around the small town, by small I mean only about a few hundred feet from beginning of civilization to the end of it.
At 3PM we had made reservations to go see the glowing worms. What you actually do here is inner tube through underground rivers and streams while looking up at the top of the caves at
the thousands of green glowing lights that are emitted from the butts of maggots. But for tourism purposes the maggots have been renamed ‘glow worms’. Gotta love good marketing. It turned out that the typical group of 10 people that go together was going to just be Marlo and I and our guide, a local guy named Lucas, evidently things were slow this afternoon, so he told us he’d take us on the typically 3 hour tour but since it was just the two of us he could show us some other things as well. Looks like we lucked out. The water was cold, the wet suits were uncomfortable, but the ride was very cool and well worth it. There were spots when we turned off our helmet lamps and just floated through the caverns in total blackness looking up at the thousands of tiny florescent green lights, it looked like a bizarre sky you might see in tahoe filled with stars, only they were green . We also had to take the tubes over several underground waterfalls, they weren’t too big so the danger level was low, but it was fun none the less. For the "extra part" of the tour, we hopped a railing and went to look at another cave that was loaded with stalagtites and stalagmites. Was really cool. The railing and walk way we jumped onto was pretty significant too... because it turned out that our guide had been one of the guys to build it a few years ago. They sent the metal beams down a natural shaft (way high up) and then waded the stuff upstream in the dark. Was crazy to think! When we went to leave the tour group before us had thrown extra inner tubes on top of our bus, so
Lucas had to do donuts in the parking lot to throw them off. This wasn’t a big deal, but the couple families in the parking lot who were doing the trail hike didn’t understand what we were up to and gave us a really good confused look.
This turned out to be a great way to spend the 1st day here, and that cold water helped keep us both awake and alert to avoid any jet lag, although in reality New Zealand happens to only be 4 hours different in time than California, the adapting won’t be too hard. We’re actually 20 hours ahead, but the actual time difference is just 4 hours, it’s just a day off. But thanks to my lack of sleep and excess of convulsions on the plane I was pretty tired, so we went to the local pub for a some beers and to the local youth hostel restaurant for some pizza before turning in….at only 8:30, but we both went down instantly and slept straight through the night.
At 3PM we had made reservations to go see the glowing worms. What you actually do here is inner tube through underground rivers and streams while looking up at the top of the caves at
the thousands of green glowing lights that are emitted from the butts of maggots. But for tourism purposes the maggots have been renamed ‘glow worms’. Gotta love good marketing. It turned out that the typical group of 10 people that go together was going to just be Marlo and I and our guide, a local guy named Lucas, evidently things were slow this afternoon, so he told us he’d take us on the typically 3 hour tour but since it was just the two of us he could show us some other things as well. Looks like we lucked out. The water was cold, the wet suits were uncomfortable, but the ride was very cool and well worth it. There were spots when we turned off our helmet lamps and just floated through the caverns in total blackness looking up at the thousands of tiny florescent green lights, it looked like a bizarre sky you might see in tahoe filled with stars, only they were green . We also had to take the tubes over several underground waterfalls, they weren’t too big so the danger level was low, but it was fun none the less. For the "extra part" of the tour, we hopped a railing and went to look at another cave that was loaded with stalagtites and stalagmites. Was really cool. The railing and walk way we jumped onto was pretty significant too... because it turned out that our guide had been one of the guys to build it a few years ago. They sent the metal beams down a natural shaft (way high up) and then waded the stuff upstream in the dark. Was crazy to think! When we went to leave the tour group before us had thrown extra inner tubes on top of our bus, so
Lucas had to do donuts in the parking lot to throw them off. This wasn’t a big deal, but the couple families in the parking lot who were doing the trail hike didn’t understand what we were up to and gave us a really good confused look.This turned out to be a great way to spend the 1st day here, and that cold water helped keep us both awake and alert to avoid any jet lag, although in reality New Zealand happens to only be 4 hours different in time than California, the adapting won’t be too hard. We’re actually 20 hours ahead, but the actual time difference is just 4 hours, it’s just a day off. But thanks to my lack of sleep and excess of convulsions on the plane I was pretty tired, so we went to the local pub for a some beers and to the local youth hostel restaurant for some pizza before turning in….at only 8:30, but we both went down instantly and slept straight through the night.
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