spel(l)unking

We arrived in Waitomo, in King Country, around midday. Natalie, Christina and I opted for the ‘Spellbound’ walking & boat tour while Sabrina went off to wait in vain for the quadbike adventure people to show up.

The first cave we went in was a glowworm cave. We turned off our headlamps, and constellations of blue glowworms appeared on the ceiling of the cave, then we went on a silent, dark ‘boat ride’ on the underground river. I’m not sure what I was envisioning, but it wasn’t an inflatable boat propelled by our guide moving her hand along a rope strung across the ceiling of the cave. It was cool, though, and an unseen roaring waterfall somewhere ahead of the boat’s path added some suspense.

The second cave we went into had a bunch of bones in it from animals that had fallen through the tomos, or holes, from the land above. Some were domestic animals, but we also saw the remains of a moa, a bird about twice the size of an ostrich, extinct about 2,000 years ago.

Unfortunately, we got back too late from our adventure to see the angora rabbit shearing show down the road, but we got to see some videos of it later on from members of the bus group who made it there.