It’s Wednesday. Our trip’s more than halfway over.
Yet the only real exploration we’ve done in New Zealand’s wilderness is our journey to the Hole in the Rock. That included a boat and relative safety. It’s time for some real excitement.
We start our journey by heading into Whangarei Falls, a short walk off a side road. There’s a bridge that crosses above the falls, giving a beautiful, panoramic view. Heading down the beaten path of stones and gnarled vines, we get up close and personal with the misty torrent below.
A baby duckling swims by in the basin at the fall’s feet. Brooks run through a forest of evergreen. There are birds singing everywhere, but it’s difficult to spot most of them. We do the typical tourism move of standing in front of the falls and snap-shotting. There’s rainbows broken up everywhere.
Then we find a rock with a memorial of a person that died near here. We start to talk about how it happened. Did they walk along the rocks at the waterfall ledge? Did they jump into the basin and crack open their head? Did they try to find out if something lurked behind the gushing currents? Whatever it is, we aren’t attempting it.
So we head to Abbey Caves, a location known for its unattended glow worms.
(As a side note, there are other glow worm caves in Northland, New Zealand, with tour guides to walk you safely through. We chose to go into a cave by ourselves, equipped with a grocery-bought flashlight. This risk isn’t necessarily required.)
The trek to Abbey Caves is significantly longer than Whangarei Falls. There are wooden steps that climb over cattle fences, and several signs with yellow-painted, “CAVES.” Arrows lead us down a beaten path in a grassy hillside. The horizon is littered with boulders and tiny stones.
It’s hot, but I wore a woolen trench coat in anticipation for the rain. It’s an expensive coat, so I refuse to leave it by the roadside. This is a minimal problem until we reach the mouth of the caves, where backpackers are already evaluating the situation.
The couple ahead of us is fit, well-equipped. Their sinewy bodies have seen dirt paths and caverns many times. But they turn around, smiling at us, and head on their way. They’re not going in. I think, “Oh crap.”
John rushes the mouth of the cave. The rocks that block the passage are as large as me. There are vague footholds on closer inspection, from experienced climbers that’ve done this before.
“Let’s do this,” he says, and he’s getting swallowed by the pitch blackness.
I have no arm strength, and the rest of my musculature is lacking, but I somehow scale into this cave. My jacket’s catching any snag it can find. I’m using my knees as a substitute for my hands.
Inside, the soil is wet. A stream runs through the musky hall. I point the flashlight different directions. The ceiling is rough, the walls are jagged. The watery floor looks fairly deep.
John’s wearing some expensive shoes – easily compares to the trench coat – so I decide to walk in the water first, to see if this is doable or not. My foot immediately sinks to my ankle. The first step, and my shoe’s water clogged.
I went through hell to get into this place, though! No way water’s scaring me now. Scaling Abbey Caves took twenty minutes alone, not mentioning the hike here.
(John’s camera is all blurry in the darkness. Le sigh.)
So I roll my pants up and walk further. It’s nearly waist deep by the time we find the glow worms. Two other hikers, both men, approach us in the water. Judging from their accent, they’re Russian [or another country in that region]. “Make noise,” they tell us, then they head out, scaling the cave entrance that plagued me just minutes before.
I’m so not made for this. But man, cave exploring is cool.
I head a little further, until I find a dirt mound that raises above the water level. Then I clap my hands and shout into the tunnels. It echoes forever, just like the movies.
When the glow worms light up to the noise, it looks as if though a sea of constellations has enveloped the underground. Blue, yellow, and white pin-pricks illuminate the ceiling and the walls.
If you could suspend yourself in the universe, this is exactly how it would feel: it’d smell wet, it’d be cold, and your legs would tremble from exhaustion. But you’d be surrounded by nothing but surreal beauty.
We try to take pictures, even though our cameras can’t capture what we see. When we finally head out, I feel like our vacation is complete.
Abbey Caves is where it’s at.
