As time goes on, I’m starting to not buy the whole narrative of the North Island not being nearly as beautiful as the south. In less than a week, I’ve managed to island hop, explore the Kauri forests, pass by giant sand dunes, dig a hole on the beach and have it fill with piping hot water, cross over volcanoes, and drive through more majestically green sheep-filled hills than I imagined existed. Perhaps I will stand corrected when I make it to the south, but the north is most definitely nothing to shake a stick at.
The final adventure on the north was not something that could be seen from the highway. This adventure involved abseiling 100 feet down into the caves of Waitamo. Upon descending into the cave, zip-lining over, then jumping into the river below, I was transported into a world of what looked like stars dotting the sky, and peculiarly, the walls surrounding me. Only, we weren’t outside. We were deep in the ground, devoid of light. And these weren’t stars, but glowworms. Hundreds of glowworms illuminating the caves like constellations for Captain Cook. Looking up from my floaty, I could make out the contours of the cave all around me. Not from actually being able to see them, but from the glowworms stuck in every nook and cranny. It was captivating staring up into the glowing sky in complete silence, save the quiet murmur of the river upstream. Once again, I’d been transported into a world foreign to any other I’d experienced before.
Following the glowworm spectacle, the adventure was back on, as we spent a couple hours exploring through the cave, scaling waterfalls, spotting eels, squeezing into far-too-tight spaces, and just generally enjoying navigating a maze 100 ft. below the ground in the pitch dark. Finally, we emerged out of the ground through a nondescript stream that so non-nonchalantly disguised what it had hidden in its depths.
Back up to the surface, I was on the road again…