And now you’ll have that song stuck in your head for the next hour or so. I traveled from Hamilton by bus south for just over an hour through lush green farm land and, yes, a lot of sheep and cows. I think I heard the ratio 3 cows to each person and 6 sheep to each person.There isn’t much in Waitomo Village except a couple of places to stay, a couple of cafes, the Waitomo School, an information center and departure points for cave tours. I was almost tempted to do a school visit but I restrained myself and headed up the hill to the Waitomo Caves Hotel. It’s a grand old building, built around 1905 but was, earlier, a British fort at that location during some battles between the British and the Maori. It was added onto in 1908 and refurbished in 1928. I can just imagine how glorious it’s been through the decades but now it’s a bit sad and needs some extra care. If this hotel was in Oregon, it would be grabbed by McMenamin’s in a flash. At one time it was owned by the NZ government but was sold and by rights, sold back to the Maori. I do see on their brochures and information that it’s owned/run by a resort company. I just know that walking the corridors is a step back in time, but a bit worn and a little tattered. The artwork, though, depicts beautiful Maori portraits or family life.

I dropped off my bag since it was before check in time and then headed back down the hill to find the office for my Spellbound cave tour. I checked in and had about 45 minutes until the tour…perfect for a quick stroll around this center area and a cup of tea. For all the many ‘Karens’ out there, I found your rock formation!

At 2pm we were all gathered to get in the Spellbound van and head out for our tour. Ross, our guide, had the 10 of us tell where we were from: Germany, Thailand, Argentina and the US…that would be me.

Ross took us for a drive to a farm about 30 minutes away on gravely, narrow, twisting roads and gave some important science info about the area: it’s all limestone around here since this was all ocean a few million years ago. The caves have been formed by water slowly eating away at the limestone. Some of the limestone is also visible at the surface and in the fields.

Ross dropped us off and gave us directions to walk down a track (trail) and meet him at the bottom of a creek so down we went.

Ross was waiting for us and this is where we got our instructions. We would visit two caves and this first one was a walk in and then a short boat ride. In this cave we could take photos at the beginning but not after a certain point. Reasoning for this was: 1)that we needed to look at the glowworms and not our screens and 2)we needed our eyes to adjust to complete darkness. I was thinking this was a bit of a scam because back at the office they asked for everyone’s email so that they could send us photos. Turns out it wasn’t a scam because our night vision really and truly was completely different in complete darkness. Kind of amazing, really.

Right off the bat I need to say how fantastic Ross was. He was a fount of knowledge in all things science and everything else. I latched onto him fairly quickly and he was happy to have an English speaking science person to share all his wisdom.

We all got our helmets on and with flashlights in hand headed off into the first cave.

So, what is a glowworm, you might wonder? It’s the larvae of a certain type of fly (Arachnocampa luminosa…known in Maori as ‘titiwai’ which means ‘to shine or reflect on water’). Through a chemical reaction in its body it has the ability to turn on or dim or turn off a light at the end of its body. It can spin a thin web so that when the light is on, when it needs food, the light attracts other bugs to it. They get caught in the stringy web that it makes and it gets a meal. Brilliant, literally! Here is a picture of a nondescript glowworm that I took in the cave, not when it is glowing, but its actual body. It is the gray, upside down ‘L’ shape at center left:

At this point we all had to make our way to the boat, turn off lights and if we had a camera with excellent capability, take a picture. I don’t know if anyone could do it. I tried my ‘good’ camera but the red eye reduction light kept coming on and you can imagine how irritating that was in a black cave. I gave up. Now lights on and into the boat.

Once we were settled, all lights were out and the cave glowed with blue green lights! It’s really spectacular! The boat was silent since it’s on a cable and Ross was in the back moving us along the cable by hand. Here are the pictures that the tour folks gave us along with a couple that I took of some postcards (opening picture).

The first picture and last picture are the postcards and I think they’re more accurate in what we saw. The other pictures show all those webs and strings and we didn’t see them as dramatically at all. Mostly we just saw those millions of little lights and the reflection on the water. We could have been looking at the stars in space rather than an organism below the surface of the earth.

Our boat ride wasn’t that long but it was sufficient. It’s also amazing how quiet everyone was. The only sound was the waterfall that was somewhere in front of us. As an aside, I did keep thinking of Pirates of the Caribbean, I must admit. And that pirate drinking song, “Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me!”

And now, of course, it was time for tea and biscuits before we went into the next cave because this is very serious business. I love having tea all day long! I made friends with the two sisters and child from Thailand and then started having great science conversations with Ross.

Now onto the next cave. This was a walking trip not a boat trip. It’s a deep cave that also has some openings up to the surface. Those small openings are death traps for animals that fall down into the cave so there are skeletal remains that are scattered throughout, mostly cow, goat and sheep. But there are archeological spots in here and semi fossilized remains of a moa, an extinct New Zealand bird, hunted out of existence. They were related to the emu and ostrich. Here are the second cave pictures, quite a beautiful place.

We loaded back into the van and headed back to Waitomo Village through the New Zealand farm land. Ross was telling me all kinds of sciencey things on the way back and even after we returned and everyone had left. He wants to return to school to get his certificates (degrees) in archeology or history or Maori studies or languages or art or, or, or. He sounds like quite the renaissance man. He and his wife have three young kids and he needs to work and can’t find time or money to go to school. As I told him, “I’m going to be that pushy American now…do everything you can to go back to school, whenever the time is right.” I don’t think he was offended…he gave me his family’s contact information and said, “When you come back, contact us and we’ll show you the places here that the tour groups don’t go.”

When I come back….