Waitomo - home to glow worm caves and possibly Hobbits
I’ll cut to the
chase here: we visited two caves in Waitomo where we saw glow worms. If you
don’t know what they are, then the name is a bit of a give-away. But they’re
actually larvae that cling to the cave ceilings, and are bio-luminescent so as
to attract prey. It’s only their livers that are glowing though, but in the
pitch black of a cave, it makes no difference. As we cruised up and down a cave
river in total darkness, we may as well have been looking at a constellation of
stars overhead. It was quite otherworldly.
Doing our best not to think of The Descent
The first cave was a wet cave, and
as I felt the odd drip of water, I prayed that’s all it was as I had spotted
some ceiling-based molluscs with my headlight when the tour operator guided us
towards the boats. The second cave was a dry cave, and included several man-made
lights inside. As we walked through, we saw some glow worms, though nowhere
near as impressive as the first cave. There are also the remnants of animals in
here from goats to cows who were unfortunate enough to fall through holes in
the earth above (hence the name Waitomo, which means “Water
Hole”). There is also a fossil of a now-extinct giant bird known as a
Moa, once indigenous to the area.
Dry cave (so no alcohol)
Outside these
caves, the landscape is simply gorgeous. But perhaps a better way to describe
it would be “Shire-esque.” The undulating land is a lush green – strangely
almost fluorescent compared to the grass I’m used to seeing back in the UK –
and great mountain ranges line the horizon (see the next post as we visited
them too). And while the filmmakers behind The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit
trilogies ultimately decided to shoot elsewhere, the sound of water dripping in
the caves we visited were indeed used in The Hobbit films.
Forget Wally - where's Bilbo?
Before settling
in Rotorua for the night, we enjoyed a cultural experience on the ground of a
historic Maori village, led by a local Maori guide. Here, we participated in
“Powhiri”, a welcoming ceremony that involves hand-to-eye coordination games
using sticks, and we learned about the history of the village (Marae) and
the Rotorua area. The area is also teeming - or steaming - with geothermal energy
which the locals use for cooking, heating and communal bath houses. You can
smell the sulphur in the air here, and I was told that the whole area, being sat on an active volcano, is a “time bomb.”
Just a casual game involving throwing sticks at one another
On yet another
film-related note, the local Maori guide has a rather extensive (for lack of a better word) family of tens of thousands,
which just happens to include the actor Temuera Morrison who
voiced Moana’s father (in the film Moana), who is his relative through
marriage!
My first claim to fame in New Zealand
Mount Doom...
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