This morning started off with a shock, BLUE SKY! having driven through torrential rain yesterday this was a great relief as our Spellbound Glowworm Tour was coming up this morning. After checking in at the tour office we headed off to the Waitomo General Store to meet our group for the tour.
At 10 sharp our fantastic tour guide Norm appeared and ushered us to the van which would transport us to the caves. The tour operator who we went with, Spellbound Glowworm Tours, only allows 12 people per 3-hour tour slot.
On the drive to the spellbound cave Norm gave us a fabulous insight into the history of the area and the ever-changing fault lines that created the landscape. Just before we reached the spellbound cave Norm stopped at the top of a hill allowing us to walk down through a tree lined Gully to the cave entrance where he met us.
Upon entering the caves, hard hat clad, we encountered a subterranean stream. We walked along the path inside the cave for a couple hundred metres before coming to a dock where an inflatable boat was moored for us. By this time our eyes had almost fully adjusted to the darkness and we were seeing evermore glowworms affixed to the ceiling. An interesting side note here is that glow worms aren’t actually worms, instead they ate the maggot form of a fly becoming incandescent to attract other insects which they feed on.
Once floating down the stream we were spellbound by the amazing sight of the entire cavern engulfed in tiny little dots – glow worms.
After our glow worm cave experience Spellbound also take you to a cave they called The Spirit Cave. our guide Norm was one of four people who constructed the pathway in this cave over a 4 month period 30 years ago – part of the walk is made of a plastic compound and uses over 4,000 stainless steel screws.
On returning to Waitomo we picked up our van and headed towards Turanga via a scenic bushwalk that Norm told us about.
We were excited to see that the blue sky had stayed with us and even noted that it felt slightly like Australia.
After scanning the world wide web for a place to stay tonight and coming up with few suitable options we very conveniently spotted the sign for McLaren Falls Park. This beautiful park is owned by the local council and only costs $10.50 head with hot showers and flushing toilets. Tomorrow we will head up to the Coromandel Peninsula and check out places such as Hot Water Beach. For now though we’re off to check out the glow worm dell in the forest close by to the campsite!
Zig-Zag New Zealand 