Last night we slept in the KiwiPaka youth hostel. It was a pretty nice little room, just a bed and small desk with a chair. At around 1:30am, though a group of kids came in from drinking or something and were making lots of noise, so I had to poke my head out the door and yell at them to get them to be quiet.
Today we went on a guided cave trip from Waitomo, the company was called rap rock and raft, or something like that. We got up and checked out of the Youth hostel before 8am, and ate breakfast. We went to the meeting place for the caving trip and then were driven to a little hut where we changed into our caving gear... They provided wetsuits, overpants to protect the wetsuits, rubber boots, helmets with headlamps, and harnesess. It was a little bit chilly and putting on the wet wetsuits wasn't too pleasant, but they quickly warmed up. I started talking to the guide about stuff, and it turns out that he went to school with the guy I talked to yesterday. He said he and Kirian started caving together about 24 years ago. He was a very good guide, letting folks know what was dangerous, but also making them comfortable about the stuff we were going to do.
We rappelled about 80 feet into the cave. we then grabbed our inner tubes ( which were at one end of the cave ) and started walking into the darkness, in about knee deep water with our headlamps on. The roof of the cave varied between about 30 feet high to just over 6 feet high, so it was by no means a tight squeeze.
At one point, Paul pointed out a couple of eels in the water, that he seemed to know pretty well, he stopped and petted one of the eels and pointed out some of the marks on the eel from territorial fighting. Paul said that he collected snails from his garden sometimes and brought them to this one particular eel...
As we were going deeper into the cave, I got near the back of the group of 6 and covered my light and looked back towards where we came from. The ceiling of the cave was covered with little bluish green lights. These are glowworms using bioluminescence to attract flying insects for food. We got pretty deep into the cave, and turned our lights out in a particularly big opening and it looked like a sky full of stars. Then paul smacked his inner tube on the water which caused a BIG reverberating BOOOM and slowly the glow worms got brighter and more of them started glowing. He said that they don't know exactly why they do this, but one theory is that the vibration from the loud sound was similar to the vibration they detect in the air when a prey insect is near, and they brighten to attract the prey... Whatever the reason, it was a cool trick.
We then floated in our inner tubes back down the cave, past where we rappelled in, and further into the other side. All along the while, Paul was taking pictures of the group. I asked before hand what I would need to bring in my camera, and he said they just don't allow it, because it would just slow down the group if everybody was taking pictures. Then we stopped and he took a picture of the group.
After the trip was over we stayed around and talked with Paul for a while about outdoors stuff, he's planning on starting his own guiding company, and he apparently is very into photography, and took many of the photos that are on the brochures advertising for the various companies... It was really good talking with him. He pointed us to a hike on the south island that we should do, as we go between punakaiki and franz joseph...
We then got in the car, picked up some groceries and headed towards tongariro. The GPS told us to turn at one point, and so I did... it took us on a twisty road, which eventually turned to a 1 lane steep gravel road through very remote mountains. It was kinda fun for a while, and then we came to a gate that said ("Do not enter unless you have been informed about the dangers that lie beyond this point" ) So I guessed it was time to turn around. I executed a 3 point turn in a driveway at the end of the road. As I was doing so, I noticed a little old lady looking at us from her door by the driveway. I stopped and got out and talked with her for a little bit, telling her where we were heading and that the GPS had led us wrong. She said that there used to be a road going through there but it was gone now and we "would have had a hell of a time" trying to get through on that road... So I backtracked to the main highway and went on to tongariro.
The next morning would be the Tongariro Crossing...
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