After leaving the Coromandel peninsula we made our way down to Waitomo. We had booked a session of ‘blackwater rafting’ in the Waitomo caves. The caves are famous for the glow-worms which light up the cave roof and walls but we didn’t want to ‘just’ walk through the caves so, true to our outdoors adrenaline-junkie nature, we had decided that the blackwater rafting trip was for us.
We arrived early and ate lunch from our camper van in their carpark. Travelling with a camper van is super. You have literally packed the kitchen sink every time you go anywhere in it, and the fridge is the best part. We can keep sandwich fillings (our current preference is for salami, cheese and salad) fresh and cool wherever we are.
Once our booked time slot rolled around, we met up with the rest of our group. The groups were of 10 people, and we quickly realised that it was us 2, plus a family group of 8. The ‘kids’ were grown up though, so it was 3 boisterous lads in their 20s, their partners, their mum and her husband. This could have been intimidating but they quickly introduced themselves and nicknamed us their ‘British cousins’ so we had become part of the family too!
We got kitted up in centre-provided wetsuits, sturdy waterproof boots and hopped into the minibus for the short ride up to the start. At the start we each picked up a large inner tube (ah, this would be tubing rather than rafting, I discovered) and got a demo of how to jump off a ledge into the water holding our tube. (Turn around, tube held around bum, jump backwards so that you land in the water sitting in the tube).
On the walk from there down to the cave, we were provided with one more preparatory drill. We placed our tubes one after the other in a line, sat down in them and all held the feet of the person behind us. Our guide told us we needed to name this formation, but that we couldn’t pick the obvious ‘centipede’. A short moment of silence was followed by one of the lads shouting “TELEGRAPH CUCUMBER”. This oddly specific vegetable choice had our guide (and us) in stitches. “Ok”, she said, “when I shout *snigger*, when I shout FORM THE *snigger*, *guffaw*, when I shout FORM THE *more laughter*”. You get the picture. I think the safety briefing took about 10 minutes longer than it should’ve!
The cave experience itself was really cool. The water was never more than thigh deep, and there was a mix of walking through the caves, jumping backwards (as practiced earlier) into pools of water from rock ledges, and floating on the tubes through the caves. At the point where we did indeed form the telegraph cucumber, I was at the front, and the guide grabbed my foot and dragged the whole formation through the darkness with our head-torches turned off. We could gaze at the glowworm formations on the cave roof as if they were stars in the night sky. Incredibly beautiful.
We found a nearby campsite and headed off the next day to the next touristy thing on our agenda, the Hobbiton Movie Set tour. I was a little sceptical about this, as although I’m a big Tolkien fan, I wasn’t sure that I would enjoy seeing what I expected to be a fairly small film set. However, I was pleasantly surprised. After the success of the Lord of the Rings films and the number of unofficial tours requested, the owner of the farmland where it is located had specified in the contract for the subsequent Hobbit movies that the set had to be both permanent, and made available as an officially licensed tour. Therefore Hobbiton itself is both larger than I had imagined, and more permanent.
Although no Hobbit Holes interiors are actually built (all interior scenes could be filmed in a studio), the entrances have been created lovingly, with real colourfully painted round wooden doors, round glass windows and a set of gardens which hopefully makes the full-time team of gardeners who maintain them incredibly proud. The insights given by our tour guide on the various techniques used to make Hobbits look small, Hobbiton and Gandalf look bigger and also to maintain and build the detailed set were an interesting view into the world of a movie maker with a multi-million dollar budget. Some seriously dedicated and incredibly creative work goes on!
After the tour we hit the road again and made our way over to Blue Lake, near Rotorua, and a campsite within walking distance of the lake itself. After settling in we had just enough time to enjoy a relaxing evening swim in the clear waters, and had some fun diving off a floating platform some way out from the shore.
Melanie and Colin Go Travelling 