New Zealand Part II - Waitomo Caves or The Mines of Moria

Our plan for the rest of the time we were in New Zealand went as follows: Wednesday-Maori Cultural Center in Rotorua, Thursday-Tongariro Alpine Crossing near Taupo, Friday-Waitomo Caves in Waitomo, Saturday-possible beach day near Auckland but still undecided, Saturday night-catch an airplane back to the USofA.

When we arrived in Rotorua the smell of sulpher surrounded us, and we noticed sulphuric steam streaming out of gutters and man holes all over the place. New Zealand as a whole is highly volcanic, but it was definitely more pronounced in Rotorua. It was raining but not heavily, so we figured the next day would be fine at the cultural center. We checked out the forecast for the rest of the week, which is when we realized our plans were maybe not going to come to fruition. Heavy rain was predicted for Thursday-the day we were going to take our 12 mile hike on difficult and rough terrain through an Alpine environment. At first we had no idea what to do. Our hotels were booked, our plans were made. We had come all the way to New Zealand for this. If it rained too much, our cave tour would be cancelled. We were feeling pretty down, but then we took action. While I went to start laundry, John got to work making phone calls. We spent the rest of that day figuring out how to make our plans work.

We came up with several ideas, but none of them seemed like the best idea. We were tired, and we couldn't make a decision. Finally the decision was made for us around 9:00 that evening. I had just climbed into bed for the night when I heard John say, "Oh crap! The Black Water Rafting Company (Waitomo Caves) emailed me back and said we're booked for 8:00 tomorrow morning!"

John felt bad. It was a two hour drive to get there, we were tired, we were supposed to bring towels with us, we didn't have towels, and everything was closed for the night. We asked our hotel if we could buy some of their towels. They said no. We thought about taking just one towel. We could share it, and we'd totally bring it back when we came back through Rotorua. But, then we decided it would be bad karma. Plus, you know, it would technically be stealing even if we were going to bring it back. We set an alarm for 5:30 am and went to sleep.

The next morning we got up, left our hotel as quickly as possible and headed out into a stormy predawn. I was feeling nervous. We were making our way to the Black Abyss tour, and I had a family at home that was expecting me not to die. When I'd first read about the tour it had sounded totally and completely awesome:

"Black Abyss is the ultimate Waitomo adventure and is the caving tour of choice for natural born adrenaline junkies everywhere.

Descend into the seemingly bottomless black depths of the glow worm studded Ruakuri Cave. This five hour expedition combines abseiling the 35 metre tomo, climbing, whizzing down a flying fox and cave tubing underneath glow worms into one unforgettable journey."

But, now that we were actually headed to the tour I started thinking about the reviews I'd read. Reviews that claimed you had to be the kind of person who would jump out of airplanes to enjoy this. Reviews that claimed the water was full of eels. Reviews that talked about how scary and cold and dangerous this was going to be. Anxiety had set in.

Fortunately, I didn't have a ton of time to dwell on my anxious thoughts because we were on a schedule, I was navigating, and we were hoping to find an open store that had towels for purchase before our arrival at the caves. We did end up finding an open grocery store. We parked the car, hoped there would be towels (even a dish towel would do at this point), ran, found over-priced towels, purchased them, raced back to the car, got back on the road and arrived at the Black Water Rafting Company with only a few minutes to spare.

We were going to do this! We met our tour guides and the rest of our group. The guides outfitted us in very fashionable (not really) wet suits and other safety gear, and then we headed out for some training in how to not kill ourselves while we abseiled into a black pit of nothingness. It was awesome!

John and I with our super fun tour group. The two next to us are from Switzerland and the girl in front of them (Vanessa) is from Germany.

Practicing for abseiling.

Headed down into the caves.

Getting ready to jump off this cliff into the icy, eel filled water.

Glow Worms!

Sliding into the abyss.

The only eel we actually saw. He didn't really care about us. 

We got done with our tour so quickly that our guide took us on part of the dry tour as well. We climbed through crevices, got muddy, climbed a couple of waterfalls and eventually made our way out of the caves.

Looking fantastically blubberous in our wet suits! 

We had so much fun on this tour! The anxiety I had felt was all for nothing. I'd do this again in a heartbeat. What a great adventure it was!

After rinsing off and drying off (hence the need for the towels), we met up with our group again and ate a yummy lunch of tomato soup and bagels. Before long it was time to say goodbye. We drove Vanessa back to the camp she was staying at (she was on a back packing trip), and then we drove for two hours to Taupo--the beautiful city that lives in the dark shadow of Mordor.

Note: Even though filming did not take place in these caves, John aptly labeled this part of our Lord of the Rings journey, "The Mines of Moria."