canyonwalker | Cave Tours x2, Hiking Trails x3 (Reply)

New Zealand Travelog #36
Hamilton, NZ - Fri, 19 Apr 2024, 5pm

We're back to our cozy apartment in Hamilton atfer another day of adventure. Today's adventure was a stitching together of a few paid tours plus a few completely self-guided things:

We visited the Ruakuri Cave (vendor link) with a guided tour. On the trip we heard about a few of the features in limestone caverns, the history of the Maori people, and glowworms. The cave features part was the least interesting (to me) as those features are the same around the world, this was hardly our first cave tour, and this cave/guide wasn't the best for highlighting features. I mean, anyone can tell you what stalactites and stalagmites are. I think I learned that in 4th grade science class.... But learning about Maori history was really interesting. Our guide was Maori and descended from the chief of the tribe that settled this area 750 years ago. He really personalized what it meant to him. Plus, we were among a small group that was all adults, so we asked lots of questions about Maori language, culture, and history.

Next we visited the Waitomo Glowworm Caves (vendor link) nearby. This one focused more on the glowworms, though we'd already learned the basics at the other cave: The "worms" are the larval stage of a species of insect— so technically they're glow-maggots, not glowworms. They grow up to a 3cm long. They glow through bioluminescence, which they use to attract other insects for food. They drop sticky lines, sticky similar to how a spider web is sticky, to catch those insects. Again, this info was all a repeat from the previous tour. That's a risk with cave tours: once you've done one you've done most of all of them. The standouts on this tour, though, were that a) there were a lot more glow~~worms~~-maggots and b) we toured part of it on a boat through an underground river. I've never done an underground boat tour before!

After these tours we were on our own and visited 3 short hiking trails in the area.

The first of these was Mangapohue Natural Bridge. A short trail led into a beautiful stream canyon to a large overhead arch. We had the area mostly to ourselves. That's always nice when outdoors, and was doubly nice after a morning spent on paid-for tours where buses pulled up to disgorge tourists by the dozens.

Next we hiked to Piripiri Cave. A short but steep trail leads up to the entrance to a large, single-room cave. How large? I estimate it's 80' deep and 50' across. And, yes, 80' deep because you enter it near the top. Wooden stairs descend to the bottom.

Finally we hiked to Marakopa Falls. The weather had been crummy all day but wasn't really a factor up to this point. I mean, it almost doesn't matter if it's cloudy and drizzling outside when you're in a cave. And cloudy-and-drizzling helped with the atmospherics at the natural bridge. But here at these falls it started to be a real minus. Marakopa Falls is large, which is a big plus, but the last part of the trail to it has been washed out due to floods, and with today's rains what was left of it was too slick to traverse safely... even for experienced hikers. (And by "safely" I mean "without getting covered in mud from slipping a few times".) So we viewed the falls from across the canyon.