Waitomo Caves absolutely rakes in the money. There are multiple tours going on in a cave at any one time, and likely that before you are done with your tour, another one has started behind you. The prices are much higher than average for cave tours. They had the most inflated prices for any activity we did. Waitomo Caves will purposely rip you off when you pay for the tour. Yes, that was phrased as a keyword search string. If they find out you are from a country with a stronger dollar they quickly ask you, when printing the receipt, if you want to pay one of two figures. One number, the NZ dollar is quite lower than the other, in our case, US dollar. What they are really doing though is making up their own exchange rate so that if you choose the NZ figure you end up paying more. I fell victim to the tactic because i was busy talking to Maree and reading some info and only glanced at the figures when they showed them to us. We were paying a substantial amount of money too, all of our tours at once.
That being said, Maree wanted to do the glowworms tour, and that was very cool. I wanted to do this tour called "The Lost World." We did this our second day. I was already infuriated because i knew this tour was going to be wildly photogenic but they wouldn't allow you to bring a camera. Instead, it was one of those lame things where they take the pictures with a cruddy camera and then try to sell them back to you at the end. Fortunately, we had another great guide, a Brit who'd done some hiking and climbing in the enviable Karakorum Range, so i instantly had a lot of questions for him.
Upon finally arriving at the location you are led through the woods to a deep black pit with a large natural window in the wall 60 to 100 feet down. Looking down through the window you see something that seems impossible, what appears to be a distant forest, thousands of feet away and bathed in light beams and mist. It truly looks like a portal to a lost world, and the effect is heightened by the limestone wall that frames it. Overgrown with all kinds of tropical vegetation, unusually thin stacked "masonry" (they call it pancaking) of grey stone eroded in to fins and almost-columns, it takes on the appearance of ancient Bali style ruins. Staring through that portal, you half expect to see pterodactyls flying by. Thus the name, "The Lost World." No pictures allowed of course, so i don't blame you if the description sounds ludicrous. After gawking for a short time you are dragged away from the impossible and made to go over somewhat dangerous trails that skirt some other pits. This unnecessary route obviously was designed to allow for practice of clipping in to guide ropes (we were in full caving gear) in a more controlled environment than what lay ahead.
In just a few minutes of meandering around a small hill we stepped onto metal cage viewing platform offering an explanation for what you saw only minutes earlier. This platform is cantilevered out over the lost world, which now revealed itself in an entirely new, more sensible but no less impressive perspective. We were standing over a huge rift in the ground formed by the collapse of the ceiling, long ago, of a huge underground hallway. What appeared earlier to be a forest canopy thousands of feet away was actually a thick covering of ferns and other moisture loving plants 328 feet down. The straight walls on either side were also covered in plants and extended for close to 100 yards in sunlight before continuing into a gigantic cave entrance. The overall impression was breathtaking, and it may be the closest i get to seeing the type of cave entrances that they have over in Borneo, or whatever it's called these days.
We were about to go down there. This was by far the biggest abseil i'd ever done, and it was also by far the most impressive location i'd ever been to abseil or go caving. Fortunately there were only 4 of us, me and Maree, and two young dentists from Scotland who were likable. So, i had nothing to complain about as far as that went. Unless otherwise stated, the following pictures are all stock pictures of models included on the cd they sold us later.
See? I told you it was otherworldly.
This is really us, not some stupid models.
The rappel took FOREVER. We were purposely going slow, and that was nice because the scenery was so stunning that it took a very long time to appreciate everything you were seeing. We were going so slow though, that i was getting bored by the time we were halfway down. It took at least twenty minutes, maybe thirty, and my entire right leg was completely numb by the time we hit bottom. Of course, i had to visually confirm that i hit bottom because my leg had no feeling in it. I could barely stand. In fact, that's all i could do for 5 minutes until the pins and needles finally returned to my leg.
In this picture you can see the cage platform at the top of the chasm.
And here the top part of the cavern entrance where the stream emerges. They didn't include pictures of the downstream entrance, which was actually more impressive.
While i was waiting to be able to walk again we noticed a big freshwater eel in the stream. It looked kinda like a black catfish in the front and an eel body behind. The stream was really shallow, probably due to drought, and the eel was so fat from people feeding it that it was almost trapped in the little eddy where it was hanging out.
Some stupid models in the way. You can see how depth perception is kind of screwy.
Down in the bottom things were no less impressive than up top. In fact it was downright thrilling. What appeared to be a flat floor from up high turned out to be a big hill we had to walk over as we made our way to the downstream entrance. There was lots of mist rolling around in shifting sunbeams and of course the temperature was great compared to the hot forest above. The terrain upon entering the cave was definitely rough and there was lots of hopping off muddy slick shelves onto huge uneven boulders that had fallen from above. One even had a small ladder on the side of it. I guess i looked adept at hopping across slick rocks because the guide assigned me to be assistant supervisor of something. He kept telling me to stop at places and watch everyone else go buy to make sure they were clipping and unclipping properly as he led to the next obstacle.
In this area we stopped to have lunch.
Maree is ready for Kung Fu action.
Just as we got to the point where there was virtually no light left from the gigantic entrance, we came to the point where we had to start making out way back out. I felt ripped off at this point because we had signed up for a half day tour, and we were just getting into the cave. I guess they count waiting for everyone to arrive, the van ride, dressing, orientation and walking through the woods all as part of the half day of caving. It was obvious though, that we couldn't go any deeper without getting into the stream and crawling through it under a pile of breakdown, and we did sign up for the "dry" tour, and since we were in the bottom, it wasn't likely to get any more impressive than what we had sees already, so i guess it wasn't the end of the world.
To get out, we had to somehow ascend 328 feet. The first 100 feet were via a long metal ladder that went through a hatch to an upper level. This ate up a lot of time too as each person had to go one at a time and i had to go last and pass up a big bag of extra caving gear that our guide had brought. Going last up the ladder was pretty neat. I turned off the headlamp so i could see all the glowworms on the underside of all the ledges i was climbing past. Before long though the guide thought i'd fallen off or something so i had to turn the light back on.
My super-long-ladder-climbing-muscles are all out of shape.
Above the ladder we were positioned on a dangerous ledge in a much narrower chasm that dropped 100 feet below us and and rose about 150 feet above us. It was definitely dark here and our lights could not penetrate the void either up or down. We traversed this area on ropes and a series of uncomfortable diagonal leaning ladders. You couldn't quite walk across them, nor could you really crawl or climb across them. It was just awkward. This area of the cave was much more entertaining and than i had expected and i was no longer pissed off.
Traversing part of the mid level chasm.
Eventually indirect light began to make an appearance from somewhere. Colors changed from beige to cold grey as calcite covered walls gave way to bleak limestone. Although we were still winding uphill traversing ledges and stepping across pits the floor transitioned from stone to leaves, mud and sticks. The thick odor of the forest descended upon us with warmth. Soon we would be back to reality. I began to go slower.
