Glowworm Caves

After a one and a half hour drive from Auckland to Waitomo, we checked in and headed to our happy-sounding Black Abyss Tour with the Black Water Rafting Company. Once we realized what we were about to do--rappel into a black abyss--we got a little nervous. We also realized that we did not know what else we would have to do besides rappel into a dark yawning cavern of death. Would we have to squeeze through spaces the size of a trash can for kilometers on end? Would we get stuck behind somebody not quite wide enough to fit through that space? Our lack of knowledge hit us as we signed what would have been a liability form in the US. Instead, it was a form just letting them know what health issues we had so the guides could ensure we didn't do anything too dangerous to our health. Nothing on there about a healthy fear of squeezing through small spaces.

We showed up with our bathing suits and towels because all of the equipment for the five hour journey was to be provided for us. We departed the station with gear that included wet suit, wet suit socks, wet suit jacket, sturdy rubber caving boots, helmet with a torch (flashlight), a harness, and rappel gear. A quick ride to the entrance of the cave and a fifteen minute lesson on how to stay alive while rappelling was all the time and prep we had before descending into the Black Abyss of Doooooom!

Obviously, this is not in the cave. Emily testing her rappelling gear (top, in the middle). Me, testing my gear (bottom, on left), and getting considerable air, if I do say so myself.

To enter the cave, we rappelled, or abseiled as they say in NZ, straight down 120 feet into a pit, which shrank to an opening wide enough to squeeze through and then opened up into a decent sized atrium. I had imagined a situation where we dropped into a wide open dome lit up by dwarf torches and glowworms, but instead I descended with a wall on one side of me and little more than a headlamp to see where to place my feet. We thought the rappel would be the most adventurous part of the day, but we were wrong. In fact, after being members of a climbing gym for a couple of years, rappelling seemed straight forward and extremely safe.

Into the rabbit hole.

Once the group had reassembled in the darkness at the end of our descent, we made our way along a stone corridor, avoiding still-forming stalactites and stalagmites. Then, one by one, our guide hooked us onto a zip line and told us to kill our headlights. We each flew through the black with nothing visible but glow worms on the roof of the cave. I think I would have enjoyed the ride more if I wasn't concerned about whether or not they had rigged the rope to avoid every single rock feature. I'm pretty sure I was tucked in like a potato bug.

This isn't anybody we know, but this is the zip line we rode--with no light. See that rock on the right? What if I had been turned? Probably no big deal, but I say tucking was a good idea.

We reassembled below and then sat along a ten foot cliff with an underground river running at the base. Our guides, both named Andrew but going by the handles Monkey and Drew, gave us a snack of hot cocoa and honeyed muesli. They wanted us to warm for the next leg of our journey: riding in an inner tube on the underground river. We were assigned inner tubes and then informed that to get into the river, we had to jump butt first from the cliff. I'm not a huge fan of jumping into bodies of water with a bottom I cannot see, and I could barely make out the top of this body of water. Of course, I was up first, so I affixed the inner tube to my rear, hoped the my guides were right, and jumped. I'm sure the impact was better than landing on the jagged rock that lined the bottom of the river, but it was still a bit jarring. In fact, the guides later told me that somebody with a weak back once broke her back on that jump. The idea behind the jump was to get everybody's wet suit full of water so it would work. But it took awhile to warm up since you basically sat with your butt hanging in the water.

Again, this isn't us, but this is the cliff we leaped from.

In the water, we pulled ourselves down the calm portion of the river using a rope attached to the wall. Our destination about ten minutes later was a high-ceilinged area where the glow worms above looked like a starry night. It was here that Monkey explained that glow worms are actually maggots of a fungus gnat fly. He explained that "caves of glowing maggots" did not draw people like "glowworm caves." For the biologists out there, a glowworm begins its life by consuming all of its unhatched siblings, giving it enough energy to glow. It actually uses its waste product as fuel for the light, which is both smart and disgusting. For nine months, the maggot sits glowing on the ceiling, suspending mucus-covered silk threads below it. As larvae of other insects are washed into the cave by the river, they hatch and, thinking that the ceiling is the night sky, fly up to their deaths. If I remember correctly, they only eat two to three insects before entering the chrysalis stage, which they endure for two weeks. As adults, they lack a mouth but who needs a mouth when 50% of your body mass is genitals? The adult stage lasts a few days, during which time they mate and the female lays her eggs in a few different groups to avoid one worm consuming every single egg laid. And then we're back to the beginning of the stage where they use their poop to make beautiful light.

After our biology lesson, we made a chain of inner tubes, and Monkey dragged us back up the river in the dark, encouraging us to take advantage of the cave acoustics by singing. He had us singing the theme song to Fresh Prince of Bel Air because, apparently, people often know the lyrics. And yes, I did--and then it stuck in my head for the rest of our trip. We then ditched our inner tubes and started the hiking portion of our adventure even further up the river.

Normal hiking is easy because the path is usually visible and on the smooth side. The limestone cave floor was covered in water, masking the surface of the path. However, a person quickly learned that under the water, the path is rugged. Thus, careful foot placement was necessary, resulting in a slow pace. In some places, the path was far enough below the surface of the water that we were forced to swim short distances, which was always a refreshing reminder that the water was chilly. During the hike, we saw an eel, slid down a small slide (not natural), and swam through a small hole they called the Rebirthing Canal or something like that.

The slide (top two pictures) and coming out of the "Rebirthing Canal" (bottom two pictures).

I also opted to try a "duck under", which is where most of the opening to a room is under water, forcing a person to put his or her head under water and come up on the other side of the wall. It was pretty simple though I just about lost a contact. Monkey said there are really long duck unders requiring swimming, which I imagine are extremely scary. The rest of the group had gone ahead when I came out from the duck under and waited for guide, and it was then that I really understood how dark the cave was without the glowworms. I could almost feel my eyes straining to find any light at all.

The final fun part of the trip was our ascent from the cave. We had left our ropes and harnesses back at the zip line, and we could either take the "Australian way," which was an easy jaunt or the hard way, which required some free climbing up two 10 foot waterfalls. Our guides guaranteed our safety, and I felt pretty comfortable climbing on the limestone given the abundance of holds available. But it wasn't the gym I was used to: no safety rope, gallons of water gushing at me, wet holds, and below, a lot of jagged rocks. It was just different enough to make me careful. However, both guides were there to catch my butt if I did fall backwards, and we both made it up without incident. I wouldn't mind doing more of it.

Again, not us, but this is one of the waterfalls we climbed.

After the two caves, we took a short hike through a forest back to the vans. We drove back to our starting point, changed out of our gear, and had some soup and bagels to warm up. It was more fun than I had expected--I guess there was no reason to have been nervous five hours earlier.