The Black Lung Has the Best Day Ever, Part 4: Worms! Hobbits! For reals, the worms were so great, you guys.

Tuesday of vacation was seriously the best day of vacation. And we had some awesome days. Before we even planned our vacation, I read a book over the summer called For Darkness Shows the Stars by Diana Peterfreund, which is like a sci-fi retelling of Persuasion. Verdict-very fun, but the love story was not as affecting as in the original because teens. I really enjoyed the sequel, which was inspired by The Scarlet Pimpernel. But that's not the point. The point is, some parts of the book take place in caves with amazing lights that look like stars in the night sky, but are actually glowworms. Neat, yes? And in the author's note at the back, she says that the book takes place in far future New Zealand, and glowworm caves are a legit thing you can visit! So that immediately went on my list for the day.

The morning after all of our kiwi adventures, we loaded into the car and headed to Waitomo, which is where the caves are. Apparently, glowworms live in other parts of  New Zealand, but they're much easier to see in the caves because it's dark there. And there are more of them in the caves, because they love the environment. We did see a few when we were on our night time kiwi tour, but it's definitely more noticeable in the caves. Glowworms aren't actually worms. They're really fly larvae. But no one wants to visit a Glow Fly Larva cave, so some enterprising and PR minded soul branded them as glowworms, and it stuck. Good job, guy!

View on our way to the caves. Imagine it with even more vibrant colors, because they really were. 

There are a lot of caves in the Waitomo area, because the area is mostly limestone, and there's a lot of water, and basically geology things that I'm sure I knew about when I was in Mr. Clark's geology class in high school, but I have forgotten them now. But there are several different tours that you can pay to go on to enter some caves and see some glowworms. We went on the Spellbound tour, which I'm pretty sure is the best one. It was super awesome. We had about 10 people on our tour, and our guide was this awesome older guy who had decided when he was about 40 that life was too short to have a boring 9-5 job, so he quit and started doing caving, which was his real passion. Apparently many people in New Zealand do that sort of thing, which is awesome. I just have to figure out what my passion is so I can quit my library job and start saving kiwis or something.

To start our tour, we drove up into the hills to get to the caves. I think the two caves we visited are on some guy's land, and part of the money we pay is so that he'll let us enter. Basically, he is making bank, which also was kind of a theme for the day. Once we got to the top of this one hill (everything was so picturesque and green), we all got out of the van to hike down to our first cave. We also saw some wild turkeys, which looked so much like the stereotype of a Thanksgiving turkey it was unreal. The hike was very low key, unlike many other hikes we went on, and then we arrived at our first cave. We all got helmets with lights on them and started into the cave. Every once in a while, our guide would ask us to turn off our lights, to see if we could see any glowworms. The further we got, the more we could see, but still, it was only like 5 or something. Not a lot of glowworm activity, seemingly. We also stopped to really look at what the glowworms look like in the light. They don't look like larvae! They hang from the cave ceiling on little strands that looks kind of like spider silk. They're very tiny. Even though it's their larval stage, they actually spend almost 90% of their lives as glowworms and just a couple of days as flies. As we were walking into the cave, we had to be sure to stay on the path and not touch the walls, and also not fall into the river that formed the cave.

Part of our easy hike down to the caves

Helmeted up and ready to go! Notice the river-that's what formed the cave we were about to go into.

Eventually we reached a spot where there was no more path, just a boat. We all piled into the boat and turned off our lights. Our guide said he would guide us down the river towards a waterfall that we could hear and then we'd turn around a head back before we went over. Thank goodness! He asked us to not talk (and everyone was awesome and didn't), and also told us to make sure we didn't just look at the glowworms, but also at the dark spaces. He said if we did that, eventually we'd be able to see the shape of the cave, even though it was totally dark. Friends, this was about the most amazing thing I've ever seen. You should definitely go. There's another book that it reminded me of, at least the title-Starry River of the Sky by Grace Lin. That's what it looks like-the most beautiful starry sky, like a river above you. And honestly, even though I knew 100% that we were looking at insects in a cave, I swear I saw constellations. We were on the water for maybe 30 minutes? I really couldn't tell you. But sure enough, the longer we were in the cave, the more I could see the shape of the walls, and places where it opened out into caverns, or narrowed into smaller passages. We were far enough into the cave that there was no outside light, it was all from the glowworms. When we finally returned to the boat dock, we just turned on one light so that we could get out of the boat, and then we walked out of the cave without any flashlights. There were so many glowworms! In the spots where earlier we had only seen a few, the entire cave ceiling was covered. We just couldn't see them before because we were used to so much light.

The glowworm strands up close-this is picture provided by the tour-mine did not turn out like this.

Another view of the glowworm strands. Also a tour picture. This lady is not me.

This is the kind of boat we were in, and we were definitely in come giant caverns, but we had no light at all when we were on the boat. So it never looked like this for us! 

The glowworms had kind of a blueish-greenish light, unlike the color of fireflies, which are much more yellow. It was awesome. Tour pic.

There are really no words to describe how breathtaking this was. Tour pic-we were allowed to take pictures at this point, and none of us had good enough cameras anyway.

Leaving the cave. I didn't want to go. Although I'm sure I would not enjoy living in a cave.

It was incredible and one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. And it wasn't over yet! Everyone was suitably awed by the experience, I think. We took a snack break (woo!), and headed off to see the other cave. The second cave isn't so much a glowworm cave, even though there were some glowworms there. It's more of a cave-cave. Our guide was actually one of the people to make it accessible to caving noobs like us. We got to see a lot more of the actual caves in the second cave, including some passages up to the surface which would definitely kill you if you accidentally fell into them. This was a mostly dry cave, with not much water activity in it anymore, but there are places where water comes in when there's a lot of rain. We saw the remains of a cow that had wandered in and gotten lost decades earlier. We also stopped in the largest cavern and our guide asked if anyone wanted to sing a song and take advantage of the acoustics. Leah was awesome and jumped in and sang "Defying Gravity." I was supportive and sang a single Glinda line to make the song flow. Everyone was suitably impressed. With Leah, not my one line. The best part of this cave was that we saw a Moa skeleton!!! As you may recall from my last post, moas have been extinct for hundreds of years. But once upon a time, a moa wandered into that cave and died, and we were in that cave too. Mind blown.

View from our snack stop. I kept thinking that everything looked like a screensaver, it was just so perfect. 

Leah's ready to go into the second cave! It was really big.

Hey look, it's some stalactites!

Here's the path made partially by our guide! This tour also had lights that could be turned on so we could see more of the geology/dead animals.

 

The Moa skeleton!!! Much more exciting than the cow skeleton, sorry cow.

On our way back to the tour drop off, our guide told us more about caves, and also about what he said was one of the prettiest short walks in the country, but alas, we did not have time to go for walks! We had an appointment with destiny/hobbits! We did stop and get some pizza and cheesy garlic bread, so that was nice. Not gonna lie, we ate a lot of pizza in New Zealand. It is a perfect food. 

Straight after we got our delicious cheesy pizza, we headed for Matamata, which is where both Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit movies filmed Hobbiton. Not gonna lie, I can't realy remember how far away it was from Waitomo. But totally doable. We had booked the last tour of the day, which was at 4:30, and that was a good idea. We had time to look in the store for about 15 minutes before our bus came. Perfect timing! Hobbiton is on some rich guy's farm. Basically, Peter Jackson was riding around in a helicopter looking for locations, and when he flew over, he was like, "Perfect!" After LOTR finished filming, the sets were taken down, but people would pay money to come onto the farm and see where the set was, much like we did with our earlier LOTR tour in Wellington. When they started prepping the Hobbit movies and wanted to rebuild the set, the farmer said, "Hey, why don't we build them really sturdy, so people who come to visit have stuff to actually look at!" And presumably, they can charge more for the fancy tour. But it's super, super worth it you guys.  

Our tour guide was this young American who almost certainly was not an actual Tolkien fan. She came across as "memorized these facts for my job." But good on her for getting to live in New Zealand for a while. That's pretty sweet. The area surrounding the sets is so Hobbiton-green rolling hills, beautiful blue skies. I can see why PJ chose it. There's a path sunken into the hills that you go through to get to where the hobbit holes are. As we walked through this path, our tour guide told us that this is part of the path Bilbo is running when he leaves to join the dwarves. Then she asked if anyone knew what Bilbo yells when someone asks where he's going. Of course, I know. So I yelled out, "I'm going on an adventure!" Then she asked if anyone wanted to reenact that moment, and I was like, "Heck yes!" I kind of got the feeling that no one had ever taken her up on that before-she was very surprised. But I did it, and it was amazing, and everyone else missed out. 

I'm going on an adventure!

Look, I'm not dumb. I realize I'm running the wrong way-into Hobbiton instead of out. But that's where my photographer was!

Then we started walking through the streets of Hobbiton. Some of the hobbit holes are small, so that Gandalf would look really giant next to them. And some of them are big so that the hobbit actors would look like they fit inside them. But all of them are very detailed, and they have fun props and clues that tell you something about the hobbits who live in those particular holes. There are some holes off the main path that are never in any movie shots. They just thought they might be, so they put them there anyway. It really makes it seem like a real place, even though the interior of the hobbit holes are sadly not there. Some of the hobbit holes are purely exteriors, and a couple have little rooms dug into the hill behind the doors that that people can pretend they're coming out of a hobbit hole. We spent a lot of time getting that photo op, let me tell you. 

Hobbit holes ahoy! Why do I have such crazy eyes in this picture? Also, that tree in the upper left is the fake one. Spoiler for next paragraph in blog.

The first hobbit hole in Hobbiton-well, it's the one you get to first on the trail.

No one is at home!

What a great place to live.

One thing you can't tell from the movies is how steep the hills are and how high up Bag End really is. I'm not sure how Gandalf drove his cart up there! But it sure gives good views. Also fun fact, Hobbiton employs several actual gardeners to make sure that the set always looks beautiful and like hobbits are going to be there at any moment. The only fake plant in the whole place is the tree that grows over Bag End. In the book I believe it says there's an oak tree there? Anyhow, those don't grow in New Zealand naturally, and getting a giant oak tree for the location would have been real tricky. So it's made of fiberglass. You really can't tell though, unless you look very closely. After our look at Bag End, which made me want a round, green door so bad, we headed down the hill and stopped outside Sam and Rosie's house before heading to the Party Tree. The land right there was apparently kind of swampy originally, but I guess the military helped make it into a field and a pond. Most military assignments probably aren't that cool. 

Up near Bag End, with the party tree in the background. See how high we are?

Next house, I'm getting that door. And a gardener. 

What up, Sam's house?

After hanging out under the party tree,which I know we did but I can't find pictures of, we headed across the bridge at the mill and to the Green Dragon! The Green Dragon is the only building on the set that is actually a fully functioning building. At the end of your tour, you can hang out there and get food and drinks, which is awesome. Everyone gets a free drink, and the non-alcoholic option is ginger beer! What a cool place. I also bought a cheese scone to eat, because 1) I wanted to say I had eaten in the Green Dragon, and 2) I love cheese scones. It was delicious. 

On the bridge near the mill. We did not see that scoundrel Ted Sandiman.

The Green Dragon! I'm pretty sure you can have actual functions here if you are rich. New life goal. 

It comes in pints? I'm getting one.

THE Green Dragon. Woo!

After that, we had to leave our hobbit homes for good. But I'll always have the satisfaction of knowing "I'm going on an adventure!" even when no one else did. Seriously, what kind of Tolkien fans are these people??? Fun fact: Our tour guide said that about half of the people who come aren't fans at all-they are friends or relatives of fans, so they're dragged along, or they go to make other people jealous. Luckily for me, I am a fan, so I could have my fan experience, AND make all of you jealous. 😃

Farewell, Hobbiton! You live on in my heart.

Next time, on The Black Lung: We do many outdoorsy things and work our puny muscles.