Anyway, Waitomo had been on my must-see list from the beginning. Last Friday, I left Auckland again to check it out with the same three other international kids who came out to Waiheke the week before.
First of all, it's hard not to feel like you're doing something extreme when you're activity for the day involves a wetsuit and a safety harness. That and the helmets we were made to wear, complete with headlamps, gave the whole cave thing a mission-like quality from the beginning. We all entered the "cave mobile," a big van that the company we went through uses to drive about ten minutes down a windy, one lane dirt road leading to a location more remote than the rest of Waitomo, which says something. By the time we each slipped into a harness in order to drop down into the cave, I was pumped up and ready to go.
We dropped about 30 meters into the cave, which is roughly equal to 90 feet. Slipping off the small wooden ledge in the harness was not unlike what I would imagine walking the plank probably feels like, except pirates don't get harnesses. In any case, it was certainly a leap of faith. Still, I guess the nice thing about taking such a leap is that once I stepped off, I had no choice but to trust the arrangement of rope, cord, and nylon holding me up. I let myself down, moving quickly at times, bumping into the cave wall at others. By the time I reached the bottom, it became immediately clear to me that this was something I wanted to do again and again.
The cave itself looked about like you might expect a cave to look. Brown, rocky, muddy in parts. We spent about two hours exploring the cave, with our guide leading us through the river (it's only a couple feet deep) and along the sides of the cave. At a couple of points we stopped to explore some tunnels and do some real spelunking. The blackwater rafting came at the end.
We'd been walking for about an hour or so when our guide told us all to turn off our lamps and look to the roof of the cave. Set against the darkness of the cave, like stars in the night sky, were hundreds of what may be the world's coolest looking maggot.
Glowworms are only found in Australia and New Zealand, and they can only be seen when it's dark. While you can apparently see glowworms during a good "tramp through the bush" (hike through the forest) here, the best and only place to see many at once is unquestionably the inside of a cave. Our guide told us all about glowworms, which it turns out live a pretty great life. They end up turning into large, mosquito-like insects, but die after only two days once they become adults because the large, mosquito-like insects never evolved to have a mouth. Lacking the ability to eat, the insect instead spends its entire short life breeding more glowworms, which hatch, and do have mouths. From the time its egg hatches, a glowworm spends nine months sitting in its web and eating mosquitoes and other insects that get stuck in the web. Glowworms "glow" because while they eat continuously, the food doesn't actually have anywhere to go. The insect may have failed to develop a mouth, but the glowworm never evolved to have an exit hole, so all of its waste just sort of sits in the lower end of its body. The other chemicals in the glowworm's body, along with oxygen, combine to give glowworm excrement its famous luminescence.
There's not a whole lot else a glowworm does for nine months apart from hanging out in the web and eating. When the time comes, it builds a cocoon, sits in it some more for about two weeks, and comes out looking like a giant mosquito, except it can't cause any trouble, because it doesn't have a mouth. From there the now-former glowworm mates non-stop for the rest of its life, and the process begins anew.
With as many mistake children as God has appeared to have had throughout the evolutionary process (the actual mosquito, the fly, most other insects) the glowworm certainly caught a break. Just sit there and look good for nine months. It's not too hard; all you have to do is shit yourself all the time and a bunch of chemicals will react and you will look really cool. One day you will have to grow up and get it together to build a cocoon, but once you get all that over with, you may not have a mouth but all that means is that there's literally only one thing you're supposed to do for two days before you move on...
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We emerged from the cave as it was starting to get dark at the end of the day. It felt like we had just been in space. As we resurfaced into our green, rolling, sheep-covered surroundings, storm clouds forming, a light drizzle falling, and the sky darkening, you could see why they chose this place to represent Middle Earth. The whole scene had this amazing surreal-like quality that can't quite be explained in words. Walking back to the cavemobile, with not a person in sight other than our tour group on this seemingly endless landscape, a flock of sheep crossed the road in front us as I unclipped my helmet and stared.
With not a whole lot to do in Waitomo, we made it an early night and woke up Saturday morning to travel toward Rotorua, which is another one of New Zealand's well-known cities. There was considerable discussion as to which activity we should do for the day, but we all knew and agreed that we wanted it to be extreme. Together with Queenstown, Rotorua is referred to one as one of New Zealand's two "extreme sports capitals," but we weren't quite sure what to pick between whitewater rafting, extreme ATVing, zorbing, and a host of other options. Everything sounded so extreme! We also could have gone to a volcano crater, watched a sheep get sheared, or just sat around drinking in thermal pools. As we drove closer to Rotorua, we figured on whitewater rafting, but also had the option of booking a package deal including zorbing, so for a little bit of extra money we decided we'd give it a try.
A good friend told me about zorbing before I left for New Zealand, and I was excited to experience this phenomenon for myself. Basically, it all starts when you're driven up a hill recklessly in the back of a van by a zorb worker. From there, you're rolled down the other side of the hill in a giant inflatable sphere, where you can choose to either splash around with a bunch of warm water, or be strapped in and roll end over end. The pictures should explain the rest:
It's a bit of a short thrill (only about a minute or so), but definitely worth it. Zorbing has really blown up here in the past couple years, so the whole thing was kind of touristy, but it's popular for good reason. Note the guys in the back of the last picture making faces. They seemed to enjoy their jobs.
Later in the day we rolled up on the whitewater rafting place for the extreme centerpiece of our day, and perhaps our most extreme activity of the weekend. The rapids on the Kaituna River are Grade 5; that's apparently the most intense you can do but even with this being my first time I was ready. For New Zealanders, and apparently American tourists to New Zealand, it's also not simply enough to steer a boat through a potentially dangerous river current. At 7 meters, (a little over 21 ft), the Kaituna River sports the largest commercially rafted waterfall in the world, and instrumental in our decision to go rafting on Saturday was our knowledge that we'd be conquering this beast of a waterfall.
Of course, as I mentioned earlier with the caves, one of the perks about putting yourself in potential danger is getting to wear really cool gear. The rafting place hooked us up with more wetsuits, specially designed extreme rafting shoes, and everything else we'd need to stay warm. I fastened my helmet and clipped my life jacket as the rain began to fall hard outside. Standing in the garage with all the rafting equipment, music blaring as we all got comfortable in our gear and prepared to step out into the raft, I couldn't help but feel like I had another important mission ahead of me. I was amped, and I wondered what sort of adrenaline rush might accompany a foray into real danger, as opposed to a guided tour where my safety would be at least theoretically insured.
Still, the guides played it up. "Ey bro, there's a good chance you all might flip today," one pointed out. "River's going pretty good." The music continued to play, hard guitar chords, heavy bass, and a fast and loud drum track leading into an appropriate chorus: "I'm goinnnnn underrrrrrrrr..." The guide in charge of safety, ironically, couldn't pass this one up. "You hear that, boys? You're goin under! Ahahahah!" He would later boast that although he was in charge of safety, that shouldn't make me too comfortable.
We waited for awhile in the garage, the guides still trying to psyche us out as we waited for the other group that had booked a tour at our time. They eventually showed up, a group of Saudi 16 year-olds. They slipped into their wetsuits and got ready to go, except one kid who couldn't fit. "Too fat, can't go!" yelled one of the guides, and that was apparently that.
We got onto the river and began floating downstream. Our boat, the four of us from Auckland and a couple of Dutch tourists, was hauling ass in the early going. We had a really solid guide, and we all figured out what we were doing on the river relatively quickly. The Saudi kids seemed to be having a bit more trouble. "There's not a whole lot of water in Saudi Arabia," as one of the guides pointed out; whatever the cause, the guide in their boat was doing most of the work, and seemed frustrated about it. There appeared to be some language barrier issues as well, as the guide tried to stress the importance of paddling to a couple of affirmative expressions and a couple of blank stares. One kid said he wasn't going to paddle and sat in the bottom of the boat. As I marveled at how amazingly blunt these tour guides had been all day, the guide in the same boat asked if the kid was sure he didn't want to paddle, and joked that if he didn't, the kids' friends were going to make fun of him for the rest of his life. It didn't appear to make a difference. I felt kind of bad because the poor kid seemed a bit scared, but he refused a couple chances to get out of the boat, and ended up getting a free ride out of it in the end.
Waiting before the first rapid, our guide asked us all to splash a bit of water on our face to warn the river's Tanifa that we were coming. In Maori mythology, the Tanifa is a monster that lives in all bodies of water; when a relative or friend drowned, it was said that the Tanifa had worked its dark magic. We warned the Tanifa and proceeded down the first rapid (really more of a waterfall). Nothing major, we were told, only about a 4 meter (12 foot) drop. The guide screamed "HOLD ON!" and we all huddled up in the inside of the boat. No Tanifa. So far, so good.
First rapidWe proceeded through a few more rapids, before finally coming to the mother of all commercially rafted waterfalls. We waited again, ahead of a drop we couldn't see the bottom of, and I splashed more water on my face to warn the Tanifa a second time. We had been fully briefed on what to do if we fell out of the boat (apparently it happens all the time), but I was still hoping to stay inside. We paddled forward, the guide telling us to "GET DOWN!" as we went over the waterfall. The guide tried to psyche us out until the very moment we dropped, but we didn't actually flip. In the end, however, we still made Splash Mountain look pretty amateur. There's a link at the bottom if you'd like to see the sequence of pictures with us going over the waterfall; at one point we were fully submerged in the water. Intense!
The big oneThe thrill lasted for a few more rapids, before we finally hit the shore and packed it in. We carried our raft to the truck and rode back to the main rafting office. We changed, got our pictures, and headed for the car after the successful completion of another extreme activity. As we were leaving, one of the guides came up to us. "I just want you to know," he said, "that every American I've ever met, and that's ever come through here, has been great, and really fun to work with. You guys are good people." It was nice to hear, and my friend assured him that we already felt the same way about New Zealanders.
That night we stayed at a backpackers' hostel in Rotorua. It was a pretty good time, as the place had a bar next door that gets pretty busy on the weekends.
One downer about New Zealand - their bouncers are crafty bastards, and they're ruthless. If you look really drunk in a bar back home, you'll be left alone unless you're causing trouble. If anything, the drunker you are, the more welcome you are. You'll probably just buy more booze and tip more gratuitously.
Despite the so-called "Kiwi drinking culture," however, there is no such tolerance in New Zealand. Maybe it's because there are no tips here. Maybe it's, er, because New Zealanders are, um, passionately committed to reigning in binge drinking (bullshit). Either way, if you're a drunk-looking guy, and you run into the wrong bouncer, you're booted. Of course, this rule doesn't apply to girls, and it has nothing to do with preventing people from getting too drunk - that's a front. It's really just a way for the bouncers to kick drunk guys out when the bar is at capacity so they can let in girls who are going to come dance suggestively and tip the ratio a bit. It's kind of good if you don't get kicked out, I guess. Hang around girls and you're usually fine. But two of my friends had no such luck in Rotorua that night. I lost the group around 2 in the morning and stumbled out of the bar looking for food. Finding nothing, I returned to our room and passed out.
We didn't do anything extreme on Sunday. If you'd like to see some pictures of Lake Rotorua, and a few of the other attractions in the area, check out the facebook album I posted last week (link also at the bottom of this post). It's also got pictures from caving and zorbing. There's also a separate album with the rafting pics. In any case, this is long enough already and I'm kind of sick of writing, so I won't waste much time talking about our trip home.
It's kind of nifty that even though I didn't finish this post until Monday, August 10, it will appear as though it was put up on Tuesday, August 4. How about that one? It's a nice cover for the fact that I'm still a little behind on posting. In any case, at some point I'll try to write something about the trip we just took this week to the Coromandel Peninsula (east of Auckland). Beautiful scenery, lots of beaches, mountains, and dramatic coastline. Perhaps I'll combine it with an account of our travels this coming weekend. Or write something completely unrelated. Who knows. In the meantime, I hope everyone reading this is enjoying their final month of summer before the start of another merry-go-round in the academic calendar.
Cheers,
Matt
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CAVING/ZORBING/ROTORUA (facebook)
RAFTING (facebook)
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