Our first week here was spent in Rotorua. After a four hour bus ride from the Auckland, we finally arrived to the beautiful sights...and smells...of the city. While Rotorua itself was gorgeous, it took a day or two to get over the sulfur smelling air. The entire city is a geothermal hotspot, with geysers and hot thermal springs popping up everywhere. At our hostel, Kiwi Paka, we had a thermal pool heated naturally by the hot springs in the area.
A little Wikipedia history: The name Rotorua comes from Māori, the full name being Te Rotorua-nui-a-Kahumatamomoe; roto means lake and rua two – Rotorua thus meaning 'Second lake'. Kahumatamomoe was the uncle of the Māori chief Ihenga, the ancestral explorer of the Te Arawa. It was the second major lake the chief discovered, and he dedicated it to his uncle.
Our time in Rotorua was orientation week for my fellow interns and me. Through our internship program, AustraLearn, we have all been placed in various towns and cities across New Zealand to work in a position related to our field of study. For example, I am a public relations major interested in the field of non-profit so I have been working for Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand doing mostly PR work for the past five weeks (I’ll explain more about my internship later).
During our week in Rotorua, we got to go on quite a few adventures, one being spelunking at Waitomo Caves. On our bus ride over to the caves, we were told by our driver that the sky was unusually clear and we got to see out over the valley and mountains below over to the famous Mount Ruapehu, or Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings.
Exploring the caves themselves was way more thrilling and challenging than I ever could have imagined. I have been to caves in the states in the past with my family, and we basically got to stand upright the entire time and casually stroll through the cave site. Our first few minutes at Waitomo Caves were spent stripping down and suiting up in thick and almost uncomfortably tight wetsuits. We then got to step into some oversized gumboots and put on helmets with lights attached to them. After finally getting suited up in this hilarious looking spelunking gear, we began our “training.” There was a practice area set up halfway down to the caves where we got to practice abseiling, or descending, down the hill. We learned how to hook ourselves up to a rope and ease up on the rope a little at a time in order to gradually lower ourselves down.
After we had a good understanding of the basics, our caving adventure began. The first step into the cave was even more adventurous than anything I had done in the past. My heart started racing as I looked down into the black abyss below. I could see a ladder rung that appeared to be slippery and covered and mud. I immediately pictured myself stepping onto the rung, and then slipping and falling down headfirst to a bottomless pit below. I soon discovered that this was a silly thought, as I stepped onto the ladder without a problem and planted my feet on the floor below after climbing down only a 10 foot drop.
We were told before entering the caves that we would be abseiling down a 60 foot hole. I remember thinking..okay we practiced a bit, that doesn’t seem too awful and I’m sure we will have time to get accustomed to exploring the cave before having to perform such a tricky task...oh man was I wrong. After climbing down the ladder into the cave, I was motioned over by our guide to step onto a ledge. A few feet past the ledge was a hole even darker than the one I had previously stepped into. I had also seen the girl before me disappear into it moments before and could not even hear her land at the bottom. Regardless, I finally stepped onto the ledge and began attaching myself to the rope in front of me. My heart was racing and I was ready to go until our guide told me to just swing out into the middle of the 60ft hole before me. Every inch of my body was telling me, “No!” but as there were several people waiting to follow behind me I went for it. I had my first adrenaline rush in New Zealand as I hung over the hole hanging by only a rope. I then began my descent. Every release of the rope brought a new burst of adrenaline as I pushed off the cave wall to descend to the cave floor below.
I finally reached the bottom and felt so energized and accomplished at what I just done. The rest of the time in the cave was spent abseiling down two more holes, one of which was actually a waterfall. At the end of this descent, we were told to climb through the small hole before us. I looked around in confusion, as the space I was standing in at this point was only about five feet by ten feet and I could see no hole in the cave wall before me. To make matters worse, the person who had gone before me was nowhere to be seen and I had to get out of the way before those following me abseiled down to the narrow space below. After a few seconds of analysis, I deducted that the hole must be behind the waterfall. I pushed through the freezing stream of water before me to see a two by three foot hole in the cave wall. I climbed through the hole to join my fellow interns.
From here, we had the chance to see glow worms, tiny green worms that live in caves and only survive for about a day after they hatch out of their cocoons. We turned off our lights and sat in a pool of water to observe the peculiar little creatures attached to the ceiling above us. It was quite a pretty sight...it seemed as if I was looking up at a clear and starry sky, except that the stars were all a neon green.
Another adventure we got to take part in during our time in Rotorua was luging, which is basically riding down a steep mountain in a go-kart without a motor. We only had a brake to pull back on if we began to go too fast. This was quite fun, except that I had accidentally grabbed a helmet that was a little too big for me, so that when I got half-way through the course each time my helmet fell around my neck. The guys had quite the experience, as a group of them decided to race down the advanced course. At one point or another they all crashed, and when one of the interns, Lawrence, crashed alongside one of our program guides, Gavin, our guide decided to take the liberty of grabbing Lawrence’s kart and using it to win the race down the mountain.
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