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TRAVEL BLOG ENTRY
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“mud pools and glow-worms” |
I had quite a few beers the night before this, as I was parting company with Aoife, Emer, and Ash. They were spending a few days in Rotorua, hiring a car, and seeing some of the geothermal areas around Rotorua itself.
Straight after leaving the hostel, we went to Te Puia geothermal park, which had two geysers, and mud pools. We were really lucky when we arrived, their geysers were just erupting, and looked amazing from our vantage point. We were shown how the Maori make flax from the plants themselves (its pretty near impossible to break strings of flax wound together), and how their traditional dresses are made.
They showed us through their kiwi room, where they reverse the lighting so people can see Kiwis during the day (they're nocturnal). The Kiwi birds themselves looked pretty weird, a bit like a furry football with a long thin beak poking out of it (!). There was also a workshop where apprentices learn to carve using the old Maori techniques, so they aren't lost.
After this we cracked on to Waitomo. This region has limestone as its bdrock, as the bottom of the ocean floor was pushed up due to volcanic activity. Because of this, there are some amazing caves underground, where the water has eroded the limestone. These caves are also famous for the glow-worms which live there.
The glow-worms are about the size of a match stick, and poo out glowing green stuff to entice insects into their sticky trails they leave below. I went on a 'Black Abyss' trip to see these glow-worms, which was brilliant.
After getting dressed up in some ridiculous wetsuits and white wellies, we drove over to the cav itself, and practised abseiling. The first thing they get you to do is abseil down 35m to get into the caves themselves, as I'd never abseiled before in my life, this was pretty frightening to say the least. After a chilling safety briefing ('its your life ..') I was off and abseiling down this hole (see pic).
It seemed to last forever, my hand was getting a little bit rope burnt, so I pushed up the last link on the abseil attachment thing. It was quite a weird feeling being suspended just by a rope, knowing that if I let go I would plummet 35m down to a sticky end ! After what seemed like an awfully long time, I arrived down at the bottom.
After this, we walked through some narrow passageways, and arrived at the 'flying fox'. This is basically a zip-line where you fly through the air in pitch black conditions (Josh told me to turn the light off). After this we sat with ourlegs dangling over a drop into the murky water below, drinking tea, then about 5 minutes later we were given our trusty inner tubes, and jumped into the water.
We pulled ourselves along a rope on the side of the cavern, and then drifted back down through the caves after Josh let off a large bang to shock the glow-worms into glowing more brightly. The amount of glow-worms was amazing, I wish I could've taken photos of them. We also found a whale-bone in the floor while we stopped for a hot drink, this must have been thousands of years old, as the ocean floor was pushed up to form the ground in these caves.
We arrived at the end of the trip, and had to climb up two waterfalls, which was pretty intimidating, I'd not done anything like that before either. Anyway everyone got out ok, and it was back to theirs for some hot soup and bagels.
previous travel blog entry
Chris in Brisbane says:
Ahahaha, awesome. The fear is pretty evident in your eyes in that second last shot! :D Awaiting the skydiving pics/post.