NZ Day 4: Caving adventures and Hobbiton

We woke up bright and early on Wednesday for the most action-packed day of our trip. The day was starting off with rappelling 100 meters into a glow worm cave! We'd booked this activity a couple months ago and had been looking forward to it with a mix of nervousness and excitement.

We weren't allowed to carry personal cameras on the activity, for pretty obvious reasons. But our guides, Ian and Loz had cameras strapped to their gear and did a great job taking pictures for us, that they then emailed to us same day!

To give you a taste of what we did, here's a picture from the website of someone rappelling into the cave. It's a little fuzzy but you can get the idea that it was a looong way!

There a few highly intense moments during the rappelling. Probably the first one was having to sit out on the bar that we then pushed ourselves off from to start the descent. We were safely hooked in, but forcing yourself to sit down on a bar two feet away with hundreds of feet below you took a deep breath. But we all did it! Here we are, smiling and ready to rappel.

You can't actually see the bottom of the gorge in these pictures because the mist is covering it. I'm not sure whether that made it better or worse, but that's what we had to work with!

We rapelled down in groups of four with our guide. Here we are, getting down a bit faster than the other group.

I had a couple mishaps on the way down: my hair got caught in the caribener mechanism, but my hero Loz managed to get me freed. Also, all of our legs went numb on the 15 minute descent, and unfortunately that meant that I couldn't feel when my too-big boots were slipping off. In this picture, you can see my poor boot that fell a good 30 meters to the ground.

Here's the view from our descent:

 

And looking back to our starting platform:

Once we got brave with our rappelling, they took our picture mid-way.

 

After about 20 minutes (although it was really hard to judge time), we made it to the bottom safely! The best thing about being on the ground was getting blood flow back into our legs. It was also a huge adrenaline rush! Everyone was a little bit shaky, but our guides had a little snack of orange juice and a chocolate bars, which helped smooth things out a bit.

Also, as we made our way into the cave opening, it was so amazing, it was hard to think about anything but what we were seeing with our own eyes.

Loz and Ian took a few pictures of us with a cool silhouette in the background.

Then we headed further into the cave where we could see glow worms. But to be honest, I'd completely forgotten we were going to see the worms, because the cave was just so cool.

When we switched off our headlamps, lights immediately appeared in the ceiling of the cave, which was about 10 feet above us. There was a cluster of a few hundred little spots of light, just glowing away! Each light was created in part by the glow worm's dung, and it attracts little cave bugs to the webs hanging down from the worms, which is how the worms eat. It was really, really cool.

Unfortunately, the last bit of our journey was a climb up a vertical ladder outside the cave. Where the rappelling was the scariest for Holly and Toby, the ladder was completely nerve-wracking for me. I was worried that I wouldn't be fit enough for the 30 meter climb, and I also had visions of slipping off the ladder, which was narrow and slick with mud. Of course, we were safely attached and could get pulled up by the guides at any time, but seeing the ladder disappear into darkness didn't do much for my nervousness.

Holly, Toby, and I were the last to go up, as Loz had out Toby in charge of getting us all attached after he went up with the first group. Luckily, we all made it up in good time, especially Toby! And then we took one final picture in our exit back to solid ground.

This activity was easily in my top 5 things of the trip so far. But the biggest thrill - at least for one of us - was still to come. We did a quick change in the bathrooms at the caving center, ate some trail mix in the car, and booked it to Hobbiton for our afternoon tour.

Hobbiton was in the middle of nowhere. We learned that Peter Jackson found the farm when he was flying over potential movie sites and thought it was pretty much perfect.

We learned some interesting movie trivia during our tour. Like the tree on top of Bilbo Baggins home was cut down from the other side of the island and then replanted in Hobbiton for the first three movies. By the time they started filming The Hobbit movies, the tree had died, so they made a new one with a steel frame and attached tens of thousands of fake leaves by hand. And we also learned, disappointingly, that none of the hobbit holes go much beyond the front door. We probably knew this deep in our hearts, but it was a sad reality to be faced with.

Even for less than rabid fans, the tour was still fun and interesting. It was also beautiful.

The tour ended with a beer at the Green Dragon.

Toby was very, very happy at this activity.

Our very long day ended in Taupo, about an hour and a half drive's south.

A co-worker of mom's recommended Bistro Lago to us for dinner, and it was great food with a lovely view. We couldn't have asked for a better end to the day!

Lake Taupo

 

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