Once we left the Coromandel we drove to Hobbiton, where you can do a tour around the movie set from The Hobbit films. Neither of us had actually seen the films, but we were surprised to find out that around half the people on the tours go without seeing any of them. The weather was good and although we did not have much context for what we were looking at it was still fun to see, and we there was a free beer included so no complaints there.
Once we left Hobbiton we drove to Tauranga. There was limited choice for hostels here, so we ended up staying in a very quirky and arty place. There was a very strict no alcohol policy, and there was a very big mixture of ages; not that that’s a particularly bad thing at all, but the whole experience of staying here was very strange in a way that’s hard to explain. With that being said, we had only planned to stay here for one night, and for one reason: to walk up Mount Maunganui and see the sunrise. So the next morning we woke up at 4am (which we would later find out was way too early), and set off. The walk up was good in that the pathway was very well maintained, but it was very windy and steep; plus we found the glare from the sheep’s eyes quite creepy in pitch black. Once we reached the top we probably sat there for nearly an hour before sunrise… However, the silver lining was that we got to see the city lights in the nighttime, and the sunrise was worth the wait. You had the sea either side of the city, with a pretty clear blue sky as the sun poked through the horizon. The 4am wake up wasn’t so bad after all as the view was spectacular.
After a well deserved breakfast and lots of coffee, we didn’t have long until we had to move on; we had a busy schedule and there’s no rest for the weary. Back into our little blue car, and google maps now set for Waitomo we took off. With Waitomo, people only come here for one reason and one reason only: to see glow worms. We had originally only paid for a quick boat tour into a cave to see some glow worms, and even though we had shrugged off about 3 separate people recommending we upgrade the tour, once the receptionist at our hostel told us there was hardly any point doing the boat tour, we rang up to enquire. They managed to fit us in to do the tubing an hour later than we was going to go on the boat, which was ideal because we only had one day and the abseiling was too expensive. Once we arrived at the Black Labyrinth tour, we had to put on a wet suit and a helmet with a headlight, then our tour of about 10 people were driven to a small river, we were told this was our training. We were shown how to sit in the tube in convoy, and how to jump off backwards into the tube safely. Once training had finished, we were then driven further up the road to a cave entrance. This is going to sound cheesy and also quite obvious, but from the get-go we were both in awe of how natural everything was. By that, what I mean is when you hear ‘guided tour’ you would expect something like a quite organised and built pathway to follow, but it wasn’t like that at all. We were literally climbing through these untouched caves, with loose rocks and water flowing through. We had to climb up big boulders, through some tight crevices, along some more rocks until we reached a small-ish waterfall. Ordered to remember what we were told in training, I jumped off the waterfall first creating a huge thud into the water as I landed in the ring. Once the convoy formed, which the tour guides named ‘the centipede’, I was at the front and dragged by my boot by the guide. We were then told to turn our head torches off and look up, to what was probably thousands of glow worms. We learnt that glow worms are actually maggots, and they glow because of the poop inside them, so not so cute once you know. Despite this, it really was breathtaking to see as we floated through the remainder of the cave. All you could hear was the noise of the rushing water, and you could barely see a thing except all these glowing dots on the ceiling and the sides of the cave. We weren’t allowed to bring our own camera unfortunately, but we paid a small price for the pictures the guide took, and we received the promo pictures of the glow worms too. Needless to say, we were so happy we upgraded. Not only do I think this will be in my top experiences whilst travelling, but I really would say it is a bucket-list type thing.
Lee Teivans Travel Blog 