Waitomo Glow Worm Caves

Glow worms aren't actually worms. They're said to be the larval stage of a fly. The fly only lives for 3 days though, and has no mouth, so it starves to death after mating. The glow worm lives for 9 months, hanging beautiful strings of glue droplets down from its clear, worm sleeping bag, to catch insects. Once an insect gets caught in one, the worm slides over, and pulls it up like a fishing line.

Glow worms live near water. Insects attracted to water come into a cave system, then fly upward toward the glow worm's glowing light. A cave full of them looks like a beautiful starry night.

Waitomo has the most famous glow worm caves in New Zealand. There's a whole system of multiple caves, and we went into one called Foot Whistle. It's named for a gorgeous formation that the discoverers thought looked like a train whistle on top of a foot. As our guide noted, it takes a little imagination to see it.

Nate and I chose to do a tubing tour through the caves. Tubes in New Zealand are truly little tire tubes, not the gigantic ones we use in the states to float down streams. A big tube like that honestly wouldn't have even fit through some of the passages.

The winter wetsuit was tight, the water a bit chilly, and the tour absolutely fantastic. A highlight of the trip for sure, and no one should miss it that comes to this country.

The sun came out beautifully after breakfast, and our tour started with a hike ovver farmlands to get to the cave entrance. My suit was so tight, I felt like a filled sausage trying to walk uphill, and probably looked like one too.

The opening to the cave was steep, a crack down through the jungle floor, with wooden steps going down down down. We walked further into the cave, began walking through wet paths, and ended up walking through water about knee high.

We heard a waterfall up ahead. He made me the leader, turned off all our lights, and made an insanely loud crashing sound. It not only startled me, it startled every glow worm in the cave. All their strings felt the vibration, and every worm turned on. You could see the "sky" light up above you.

He had us put our right hand on the wall beside us, and everyone put their left hand on the person in front of them. All except me, as I was the leader. I thought he might lead me, but he didn't. He told me to stop before I got to the waterfall and then went off ahead in the darkness. We felt our way through the dark, looking up above us at the twinkling sky, and all the while the water was getting deeper, and the waterfall louder.

I knew it must be some ploy of the guide, designed to add intensity to the tour. I imagined him up there laughing at our conversation. But truly it worked! Eventually I couldn't touch the ground anymore even on tip toes, and the wall became hard to hold onto. Nate switched with me because he was taller, and could better lead.

I was impressed with his impetuousness. He had actually never been in a real cave before, and wasn't even sure if he would be claustrophobic (turned out he wasn't, thankfully). Eventually though, he coudn't touch either, and switched on his headlamp. The guide was seating a few feet in fornt and above us on a chair smiling. He said most people switched their headlights on about 30 feet back.

I won't recount every detail, but the triip had several thrills in addition to the worms. We had to fall backward down the miniwaterfall and were submerged in gave water. We floated along holding the feet of the persons behind us, pulled ourselves on ropes, and went down a hugh metal slide and a breaking speed. But the glow worms were really magical.

We were so happy we did the tour. After a hot lunch, we continued north to Raglan.Read more