South to Waitomo Caves and Tongariro (which means nothing to my readers) ~ Derek's Travels

Despite thoroughly enjoying having my rental car, I've discovered another interesting quirk. It seems that as the day progresses, the lock on the driver's door seems less and less inclined to let me in. It works the first time I try it in the morning, but after that, it's only has about a 40 or 50% success rate. I've developed some strategies and theories about getting it to work, but nothing seems to quite work. If I'm able to partially unlock it before the electronic mechanism kicks in and slides the lock all the way to open, sometimes that works, but it is quite a difficult, precise thing to do. After a few tries of that, I usually just slyly put my backpack or something in the backseat, since fortunately the other doors unlock, pretending like I needed to get back there in the first place, then playing with the lock and opening it from the inside, propping the door open, then popping my head out of the backseat and sticking my arm around the catch the door just before it closes itself again, then acting as though nothing is out of the ordinary. I'm sure I look a bit like I'm stealing the car, but no one has said anything to me yet, so let's hope that streak continues. Also, since the radio only picks up one classical station and one or two pop/rock stations for about 10% of the drive, I've had a lot of time to think and enjoy the scenery, which is quite nice, enjoying the solitude and beauty of nature. Every once in a while, I'll enter a town and see billboards and advertisements for the local radio stations, taunting me with frequencies above 90. Speaking of billboards, I've also seen a lot of those warning of the dangers of speeding or driving while tired, noting that "Red means bloody red" (a red light), the 100 km is a limit, not a target - drive to the conditions of the road, and take time to rest - for example "Going to Sleepsville? Stop in Woodville." and "Wakey wakey. Welcome to Wairoa." Clever.

So, along with the Camry, I headed down, back through Auckland, to the Waitomo Caves, an area full of limestone caves and glow worms. With frequent photo stops, windy roads and construction areas that slow traffic, things seem to take longer than they look at the map, though the driving is beautiful, so I can't complain too much. In addition to the great views, I stopped at a few grocery stores for some lunch and snacks, so along with plentiful peanut butter sandwiches, I've been enjoying potato chips and a ton of sour candy. In one town, I found the Sour Mix and Match bag, including sour worms, rings, sharks, and other random, sugar coated delicacies. These have made the drive that much better, and I've become addicted to them. As I've told a few people, I'm like a kid when it comes to candy, though with a bit of disposable income, it's a dangerous predilection. Anyway, I got to Waitomo late in the afternoon and found that the main hostel was booked solid, though I got lucky and found another one ten minutes down the road, on the way to the middle of nowhere. It turns out that I missed most of the tours for that day, so I decided to wait around and take a tour of the caves first thing in the morning. I met a Taiwanese guy named Jimmy that had lived in San Francisco for a while, so we shared some stories and complaints about our rental cars, arguing over whose car was better/worse, and we also found out that we'd be doing the same tour in the morning.

For dinner, I treated myself to a local pizza place - days and nights of peanut butter sandwiches and pasta left me wanting something more. As it happened, the pizza wasn't particularly good, though the atmosphere was amusing. As I placed my order, I noticed over the speakers that they were playing Milli Vanilli's classic, "Blame It on the Rain," and I'm not even going to pretend like I don't like that song. It's a quality pop hit of the time, even if they didn't sing it themselves...someone sang it, and that person did a good job creating a catchy tune. As it turns out, the cd player also thought it was a catchy tune, so it continued to repeat, over and over and over. Now, this honestly wouldn't have been too bad (I really do like that song), but it was also skipping and going backwards and forwards, so singing along in my head, just as it would get to the chorus or another great part, it would skip ahead or back, leaving me a bit unsatisfied and frustrated. Finally, right before leaving, the 35 minute song was laid to rest, and, of course, I did have to go listen to it on my iPod to hear the real thing in all of its glory and non-skipping splendor.

The caving/black water rafting tour is one of the highlights of the region and basically the only reason why people come to this area. Early in the morning, I drove down the road to the starting point for the tour, where we met Simon, a local driver full of interesting stories, bad jokes and under his breath comments making fun of the other people. The six of us on the tour (me, Jimmy, and four British friends) loaded into the van, and we drove off into some random sheep fields, up to a spot with a circle of tall trees. We did some brief training on the equipment that we'd be using, got suited up in wetsuits and helmets with attached lights, and then we walked down to the trees and saw the chasm that we'd soon enter - a narrow opening about 30 feet wide by 100 feet long. We attached to the cables and rappelled down the 90-100 foot drop, into the shallow water of the stream that flowed through the opening. From there, we grabbed our innertubes and jumped in the waist or knee deep water, floating along peacefully as we moved into the caves, into almost complete darkness. A few minutes into the caves, the guide instructed us to turn off our lights and look around, as we were in the first area that contained the glow worms (not to be confused with the sour worm candy that I was eating earlier). All around us were tiny little lights, just a few feet above our heads, along the ceiling and walls of the cave. It looked as though we were suddenly surrounded by a sky full of thousands of stars, somewhat like those glow in the dark star stickers that people put on their ceilings, except much, much more plentiful. It was a brilliant display to see the glowing worms all around us, almost everywhere you look. The worms are actually fungus gnat larvae that live along the cave walls. In order to attract food to their sticky lines/webs, they emit a light similar to that of a firefly, and then they reel in the catch once they feel the line move. The color is produced as they burn their waste, and they stay in this state for about 9 months. Then, they emerge as the gnats, though without a functioning mouth, so they quickly reproduce, then die of starvation and exhaustion after just a few days of life. Whatever the case, the light show was amazing.

We moved through that main cave along into another portion where the water was about 8 feet deep, where a few people fell in when the guide said "Oh, it's just knee deep, you can stand up." I'm sure he loves tricking people with that one. Next, we found some portions of the cave where the walls grew taller and more narrow, and we did a bit of caving, basically meaning shoving yourself into extremely small holes that look to be a bit smaller than the size of your body, though after a bit of squirming and pushing, you can make it through...definitely not an exercise for claustrophobics. Thankfully, I made it through all of the holes, and we moved on to the final part, in which we climbed into a similarly small hole, pushed our way up, behind a cave wall and ended up 20 feet over and above where we had started. Our whole group made it up (which is supposedly rare, since many are afraid to try it or unable to fit), and we enjoyed a warm drink and some chocolate before heading face first down the steep hole to get back down. A bit muddy and not really feeling my feet as a result of the cold water, we made our way back to the opening, about 1 km back upstream. We finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel, secured ourselves and rock climbed our way back up the chasm wall into daylight. The five hour tour was definitely worth the money, and the guide took pictures along the way for us, so I bought the cd, but I split the cost with Jimmy, the Taiwanese guy, so he's sending me a copy of the cd when he gets back to Taiwan...I hope. I probably should have just paid the extra money to get my own, and, no, I'm not mentioning how much that cost difference would be. Eventually I will post those pictures, but it will be quite a while.

So, I left Waitomo Caves and headed South towards Tongariro National Park for some trekking and sightseeing, all the while driving through more amazing scenery and more verdant hills and beautiful valleys, lined with trees, sheep and cows. The one day hike across Tongariro is touted by the guide books as the best one day hike in New Zealand, so it has a lot to live up to, so I hope it doesn't disappoint.