Our last full morning of our trip we packed our bags and headed out to the Waitomo Heritage center to check in for our activity. Earlier in the week, Grant had found a black water rafting tour that goes through the Waitomo Caves to give a mix of adventure along with enjoying the view of glow worms above. As I had never been down in a cave before, I was a little nervous about how it would go, but was willing to give it a shot. And as I had learned throughout the trip, taking a chance on these adventurous activities has been worth it! 

When we arrived, there were very few people there and no one at the desk to check in. We ended up sitting next to Valerie, a Canadian working in New Zealand for the next year. After chatting with her for a few minutes, two guides came up and asked if we were ready to go. Lucky for us, it was just Grant and I along with Valerie! Our guides, David (from Quebec) and Matt (from Arizona) told us we would be able to do a little bit more within the caves since it was such a small group. After a quick chat, we hopped into the vans to head to the rafting site to change into our gear. Since Valerie and David were both Canadian, they rattled off in French to each other while Grant enjoyed talking to Matt about skydiving. Once there, they gave us wetsuits, socks, boots, and a hard hat with light. 

Then it was off to the opening of the cave. As there were two waterfalls we would be jumping off, we got a quick lesson on the proper way to jump. Before we knew it, it was time to head underground in to the cave. They.told us the week prior, the water level was up about 3 feet so there was a lot more floating in the river. For us, it was a good mix of walking and floating, especially near the end of the tour. With a small group, we got to do a quick maze through in the cave wall, jump off two waterfalls, a waterfall crawl, and kiss a whale bone (supposedly gives you 20 years good luck…we’ll see.) I enjoyed all the activities we got to do, although jumping backwards off the waterfalls was a little nerve-racking, but thankfully they weren’t that tall. The waterfall crawl was interesting and hard! Trying to crawl under was tough as I felt the water was trying to push me off the side (which it did the first time around), but managed to get through on the second try. Grant also flew into the pool of water on his first try. 

After our activities, we got to float through the rest of the cave just enjoying the site of the glow worms above us. The picture below was a long exposure shot so they aren’t actually that bright in person, but it was still worth it to see them. They are definitely interesting creatures! We learned that they spend most of their life in the larvae stage (which is what you see in the cave) and they have strings that hang down made of mucous and urea that act as a spider web to catch insects. Once they catch them, they inject stomach acid into their prey to dissolve in order to eat. They go through a transition stage like a butterfly, but once they emerge from their cocoon they don’t survive more than a few days. 

Once we were finished with the rafting tour, we hopped out of the water and headed back to the rafting site for a nice hot shower. The water was freezing while we were in the cave but it was amazing how well the wetsuits kept you warm the entire time. (Well besides your hands if you kept using them to direct your tube in the water). After rinsing off and changing, we headed back to the homestead to look at the pictures and eat a free snack. Matt and Grant connected through Facebook to potentially jump together this summer in Perris while the two Canadians exchanged numbers (we think they were definitely flirting with each other). Grant also mentioned to me on the way out that his knee had hurt a bit while crawling through the caves but at least the thick wetsuit gave it some cushion.

After a quick ice cream break at the shop next door, we hit the road for our last activity of the trip, the Hobbiton movie set tour. To be honest, I have never seen any of the Lord of the Rings films (more of a HP fan) but I will say the tour was very interesting to see and walk through. Since we arrived an hour before our set time, we checked in with the front desk to see if they would let us move our time up. We were able to hop on the tour heading out in less than 10 minutes! We hopped on the tour bus that took us across the street into the Alexander sheep farm towards the Hobbiton village. The Alexander family, we learned, was looking to diversify their sheep operation in the late 90’s. As chance would have it, Director Peter Jackson located the Alexander farm during a helicopter scouting operation and decided he wanted this farm to be the location of Hobbiton in his upcoming Lord of the Rings movie. The family worked out a deal with the movie team and the rest is history!

Some interesting facts we learned on the tour: 

• Filming for the LOTR trilogy exterior scenes took 3 months
• Filming for the Hobbit trilogy exterior scenes took 12 days (the whole site was initially torn down so they had to rebuild it, now it’s being preserved through these tours)
• The crew put so much attention to detail that you could guess the profession of the owner of each Hobbit hole based off what was outside their home
• Used to have real jars of honey outside a Hobbit house on the tour but they kept getting stolen and sold on eBay
• NZ army built the road into the farm for the set after funding ran out and the army “wasn’t very busy” (pre 9/11 times)
  • Many of the extras in battle scenes in the movie were the same soldiers that helped build the set
• The firefighters actually burned the Green Dragon Inn down in the scene where Frodo has a vision of the city being pillaged
• The tree behind the Bag End residence is the only fake tree and has over 250,000 wired leaves all spray painted the “perfect” shade of green
• Peter Jackson wanted plum trees in Hobbiton true to the book but felt a real tree looked too large for scale so the crew planted apple and pear trees but before filming cut off all the real fruit and spliced plum tree branches in

Once we made it through the village and over to the Green Dragon, we enjoyed a scone and a beverage before concluding our tour. We received a free stein due to a portion of the village being under construction. They are currently building out three hobbit holes to allow for visitors to go in and explore the inside of a hobbit hole complete with rooms and hobbit decor. 

We then headed up to Auckland to meet up with two of Grant’s previous coworkers from SpaceX for dinner. Bruce is a native Kiwi and recently moved back to New Zealand while Keith and his partner were out visiting while on their long trip. It was a nice way to end a long, fun day. But we weren’t expecting the early morning that was to come the next day.