Black Water tubing and caving with glow worms in the South Island, New Zealand

If you’re thinking about going to New Zealand you’ve probably already heard that there are lots of glow worms here! The most famous cave you can visit to see them is Waitomo in the North Island. But this didn’t quite fit with our plans as it was about an hour east of the route we were taking. But luckily it seems there are glow worm caves all over the country! It was already definite that we’d be driving the South Island’s West Coast. So, as we were passing through anyway, we decided to go with Underworld Adventures in Charleston, near Westport. This had the added bonus of being able to time the activity to fall on my birthday!

We were not disappointed by this choice – it was one of the best things I’ve ever done! It’s a bit pricey at $185 each, but you can get discounts on BookMe and for what you experience it is so worth it! It’s a four-hour trip that incorporates a rainforest train ride, caving, tubing and glow worms.

We had a tiny group with just five of us plus two guides, so I knew it was going to be pretty special right from the start. We were kitted out with 5mm thick wet suit overalls and jackets, along with socks, booties and gloves, so I also knew the water was going to be pretty damn chilly! The adventure started with a 10 minute ride on a little open carriage Choo Choo train! This wound up through the rainforest on a little track alongside the river and limestone cliffs. Beautiful! Then we picked up our tubes (basically big rubber rings) and walked through the rainforest and up 128 steps to the entrance of the Metro/ Te Ananui cave. After a quick photo and a briefing from Hillary, while she choked on a sand fly, we switched our headtorches onto full beam and it was into the darkness for the next few hours!

There were three levels to the cave, with the first having around 40 metres of limestone above us. It was pretty cool and unnerving at the same time! Not a place to go if you’re claustrophobic that’s for sure. There were stalactites and stalagmites everywhere and the guides were great at pointing out the different formations. Lots of them had names to help with navigating the caves, such as elephant’s foot, the hall of refugees with lots of faces, and the devils table, which was a big slab of rock that had fallen from the roof of the cave.

There was one spot where you could see paw prints from the dog belonging to the guy who first discovered the cave with a candle and matches (lunatic!) in the ’60s. A designated pathway has been marked out to protect most of the cave from erosion, so the paw prints are still there where the pup left them! We also saw the way the rock had cracked making parts of the wall look like bricks. This reminded one explorer of the bricks in the Paris Metro – hence the name of the cave!

Most places we could stand up and walk normally but there were some sections we had to stoop right down and crab walk sideways rolling the tube. It was so cool! We turned our headtorches off at one point and it was completely pitch black, I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face! It was so quiet too, with just the occasional drip of water from somewhere.

Once we were down on the third level where the river comes up, it was time to start checking out the glow worms! We turned all our lights out again in one cavern and there was a few hundred of them all around us. George tried to take a photo but our camera just isn’t good enough for such low light levels. Beautiful, though! Then a bit further along we came to the water and it was into our tubes! We had to link arms and legs to form a chain and our gloves were webbed so they acted like paddles. The water was a Baltic 6 degrees so my hands were frozen by the end! But it was amazing. We spent the next 20 minutes or so drifting gently down the river in almost complete darkness with our lights turned off. The only light source was the MILLIONS of glow worms all above us as we cruised along. It was like we were looking at the night sky with stars twinkling down at us! I said they were like my birthday candles ha.

It was so incredible, I was sad to see the light of the cave exit when we got to the end! The fun didn’t end when we left the cave, though. There was still a few kilometres of river for us to travel down to get back to where we started. It was drizzling a bit but we were pretty wet anyway and we had such fun drifting down the river and bumping over the little rapids in our tubes!

It was a fantastic day out, we had huge grins on our faces from start to finish! The guides took pictures of us throughout the day too, and they print off a couple for you and put the rest on their website for you to download for free, which is just great. My phone is a heap of crap so I haven’t been able to download them yet, so it’s just George’s camera work on here at the mo ha!

Definitely recommend doing this amazing trip if you’re on the West Coast!