Leaving Hot Water Beach and on to Waitomo

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Our last day on Hot Water Beach gave us a unique opportunity. As the time for low tide continued to shift, it was going to arrive around 7AM on our departure date. We decided to head down first thing to have one last go at the pools.

I wish getting the kids up for school was as easy as getting them up to go to the beach first thing in the morning. All three children methodically crawled out of bed, got their suits on and robotically marched to the door. We grabbed our shovels and headed to the hot water section of the beach. There were three cars in the parking lot, so we expected to have some company. We passed two twentyish men running through the surf away from the hot water. To our amazement, no one was there. We set into digging and built a nice pool in the primo spot.

The water coming out in some areas is scalding, so the best plan is to build on the edge where you can dig into cold water and mix it with the hot. There isn't much in between. We settled in for a nice soak for an hour or so. Two couples eventually came, but they quietly built their pools and barely said a word. It was a nice way to end our time at this beach.

We got back to our house to pack up. On the way out of town, we stopped at the Holiday Park to dry our laundry (our house had a washer, but no dryer) and to use the internet access. We finally got out of town a little after 11. Our next destination is the Waitomo area, home of the glow worm caves.

We were confronted with about a three hour drive and didn't have any plans for stops. Our path was a southwest diagonal one. It was an interesting drive, particularly once we got off of the Coromandel Peninsula. The state "highway" took us through the main streets of a handful of towns that were very interesting. The storefronts didn't resemble American ones and they all had adjoining overhangs that sheltered the entire sidewalk. This was a nice feature today as it was raining all day on our drive. A couple of towns had McDonalds and Subway franchises tucked away on the far ends of the main drags.

We got to the town of Pearoa, which Suzy had read about. The town is the home of L&P soda, which is a tasty lemon cola with an oxymoronic slogan, "World Famous in New Zealand." We found a park with a huge (15-20 foot) likeness of one of their bottles. This park also had a couple of "ExceLoo" stations. This is a fusion of the words "excellent" and "loo", and for good reason. We had seen one or two of these elsewhere, but this was the first time we used one. The bathroom had a sliding door that upon opening revealed a modern mostly stainless steel toilet facility. When you closed the door a voice emerged from a speaker and kindly asked you to lock the door by pushing a button. After doing as instructed, you were further told how to unlock the facility and were warned of a 10-minute time limit then some elevator music began chiming through the speaker. We were fascinated by the ExceLoo and have video footage to prove it!

Another brief stop was made to take photos with a giant colorful kiwi (the bird, not the fruit or New Zealand citizen) that was painted in vibrant colors. This was a quick pullover stop, as the rain had increased into a steady downpour. Shortly after, we pulled into Waitomo.

Our accommodations in Waitomo were funky to say the least. The proprietor of the establishment, Billy Black, does a "Kiwi Cultural Show" featuring wild pigs (one of which was acquired from Stewart on Road 309 who asked us to send his regards). He also holds part of a sheep-shearing world record, so he's not your typical inn-keeper. The lodge is made up of an old airplane, a derailed train and a boat that has seriously taken a detour from any water. All of these have been converted into hotel rooms. We opted for something a bit more traditional - a room built in the side of the hill made to look like a Hobbit House, rounded doorway, curved ceilings and grass growing on the roof. Through the circular doorway we have a bedroom with two sets of bunk beds. The main area has a larger bed, table with chairs and a kitchenette. The bathroom is thankfully devoid of Hobbit features...what these might be I shutter to think.

Billy told us that if it keeps raining there was actually a chance that they would close the glow worm cave tours. Some of the tour, and the part of the caves where you see the most glow worms is an underground boat tour into the recesses of the cave. This is where the glow worms prefer to set up camp. We took heed of his warning, and decided to drive back into town to arrange for a tour this afternoon.

We got to the I-Spot in town and arranged for a tour. The I-Spots are locations across New Zealand designed to give out tourist information. Nearly every town has them. In many stops these appeared to be senior volunteers all of whom were very nice and extremely helpful. We actually saved quite a bit of money getting a combo package with the Waitomo Glow Worm cave tour and another 2-hour walking tour of another cave...more on that one tomorrow.

We got on the last tour of the day. We were joined by two other groups of 5, so we had a decent sized tour group for this time of year. The girl who sold us the tickets told us that the first tour of the day had all of three people. We left the shelter of a very stylish tent-like structure that served as the base of the cave tours. From there, we walked through a heavy rain on a sidewalk through a lush forest above the river that runs into the cave.

Our guide was a 50-something petite woman who was thoroughly unenthused. She led us through a gate that blocked the man-made above ground entrance into the cave. The caves were discovered in the late 1800s and were only accessible by the river. The native Maori stayed away from it, as they only used caves to bury their dead. The cave was tastefully lit up to accentuate the stalactites and stalagmites formed by the calcium deposits in the dripping water. We eventually made our way to the cathedral of the cave (the highest point) where the ceiling some 50 feet above was graced with the first glow worms on our tour.

The glow worms are set into the ceiling of the caves when the mature flies lay their eggs. In the larva stage of development (the only stage in which they eat), they have a light on their tail. This light attracts mosquitoes and other small insects that fly in along the river. The glow worms extract thread-like webs around themselves that entrap the insects. Eventually the worms enter the chrysalis stage and re-emerge as a mouth-less fly who either reproduce or get snared in the webs and feed the next generation.

We eventually arrived at the boat portion of the tour where it was evident how high the water had risen (not as high as back in 2004 when it flooded half of the cave). We boarded the boat and slowly tracked off in the dark. Our guide was pulling the boat along a rope so the ride was slow and steady. We eventually came to a room where the ceiling exploded like an amazing starlit night. Thousands of glow worms above us. This was quite a unique sight.

We returned to the makeshift dock and were given vague instructions to head up the stairs and go to the right. The stairway led to a small platform with one set of stairs leading down toward the cathedral and another leading back toward the entrance. The three groups poked around a little while waiting for our guide to emerge to give us further instructions. I ventured down to the cathedral with Theo to check out the worms under total darkness and felt a bit like a kid cutting class. One of the other groups headed to the top of the next stairway and milled about. Finally one guy went back to the boat to see what the holdup was. He came back an announced that our guide was gone. This was all downright weird. Here we were on a "tour" hunkered down about 100 feet underground in the middle of cave. At least Geddy had recent caving experience and announced that the guide who took his school group on their tour had once spent 5 1/2 days caving. I wasn't interested in challenging her record.

We all finally just started heading toward the entrance. When we got there, someone tried the door and announced "it's locked." So we go on a caving tour and an episode of Scooby-Doo breaks out. All we needed was a box of Scooby Snacks and a real estate developer hoping to scare everyone off so he could buy up the land cheap and open an amusement park. At last someone figured out how to open the gate and we were freed from our Maori tomb.

This turned out to be half of the battle. As we headed through the tented building that housed a theater, gift shop and restaurant, no one was around. We got to the entrance and low and behold, it was locked. "Zoinks!" We waited for a while and still no one. Finally we headed back toward the cave and looked for an alternate way out. We descended some stairs and found a ramp that appeared to lead to the gift shop. Finally we saw an employee who got on our case telling us it was time to leave. She scolded me for heading back up the stairs. Even after I told her that I had to go back to save the others, she seemed put off by my misbehavior. We scooted through the gift shop and thankfully made it through the glow worm cave tour without having to bed down in the cave for the night or resorting to cannibalism.

We ended up dining at place in town called Curly's. This was a combination tavern, restaurant, internet cafe and liquor store. The tables in the front facing the windows were primarily folks like us eating. The middle section of the tavern was clearly a hangout for the locals. A few took breaks from the tables to shoot some pool.

We had a nice dinner, although after ordering the cook came out to inform us that they only had two veggie burger patties. Gasp. We changed a couple of the orders to nachos and vege (they use this spelling for veggie) soup. Theo feasted on a platter of mini hot dogs. I guess he's still trying to get his bacon fix. Back to the hobbit house.

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Photos

Out in front of the Waitomo Caves
No cameras were allowed on this tour, so this could have been the last picture of us had we not made it out!

Comments

[Patty]

The Mystery of the missing Glow Worm Guide
I would sent this to the writers. They might make an episode out of it:)