Okay, I’m not going to burden you with the twists and turns, but after some fluttering of our eyelashes and well-placed words of appreciation, we managed to coax New Zealand Air to put together a Sydney layover tonight that will get us to Hobart tomorrow morning, rather than mid-day Tuesday. We hope. But I’m not going to jinx this by hitting “Publish” before we’ve left New Zealand airspace. So if you’re reading this, we’re finally actually on our way. And then I’ll let y’all be for a while.

So.

Let me finally wrap up our North Island perambulations with Waitomo and Hamilton.

When you say “Waitomo” to anyone with an inkling/interest in NZ, the expected response is “glow worm caves – right?!?” Which was why we were headed there. Signed up for the Waitomo cave walk+boat tour one evening, and another cave walk in Raikuri cave the next morning. Our guide was young and earnest but, by his own admission, had only been leading cave walks for a few weeks, and was still figuring out his patter.

I’ll confess that I don’t remember tons about either the walk or row-towed boat parts, with the exception of one domed chamber that, in the dark, was filled with a night sky of green stars. No photos allowed in the cave, so my photo-driven memory is scratching for other concrete touchpoints of the tour. (We were allowed to take photos for the very last part of the boat ride, just as we exited the cave – see one below.)

One part of the disappointment was that, while we saw lovely cave formations in the light, and beautiful arrays of little green dots in the dark, we left without having any idea of what an actual glow worm looked like. There were no informational posters or displays to enlighten us, and our guide’s descriptions came up short.

Devon mentioned this to one of the older employees who was closing things up on our way out, and he seemed to take it to heart. He then furrowed his brow and said, “You know, if you want to see more glow worms, there’s a path at the end of the parking lot down there. You can go into the cave there for free whenever you want, and if you follow the path into the bush at night, there are glow worms everywhere on the hills.”

Sure…wandering into the bush at night… But we checked our maps, pulled out our headlamps and, after driving back over just after sunset, lit out into the bush to go a-huntin’ in the dark for glow worms. The well-defined path wound around corners and up and down the sides of the river valley, as well as straight through a few little caves of its own. And there were glow worms – sometimes a swath of them on a dark hillside, sometimes just a few peeking out from the foliage like watchful forest spirits.

After all these tame guided tours, it was surprisingly refreshing to launch off on our own, setting our own agenda and boundaries. Which we reached about a kilometer in, at the bottom of a steep hill, when it started raining.

But we caught a different split in the track on the way back, so got to creep through new little caves and see new glow worms, and the rain tapered off to nothing almost before we were even on our way. Great fun. 

But but but: the final “cave experience” was Ruakuri, an “add on” tour that we’d booked just to fill the time. Just another cave, innit?

You guessed it: Ruakuri may be my favorite cave ever. There were just four of us – an active older German couple and us – and our guide Caiser took advantage of the small group size to give us what felt like an up close and personal tour of the cave complex.

Ruakuri’s original entrance had been used as a Māori burial site, so had been closed off to visitors since 1904 – a surprisingly early date for respecting native rights and customs. The replacement entrance – starting with that crazy spiral at the top of this post – was a multimillion dollar government project involving James Bond-worthy electronic sliding doors and steel tunnels, and didn’t open until 2005.

Once inside, there were the usual stalactites and stalagmites, but also cave popcorn, cave bacon, “pancakes” and probably half a dozen other food-related limestone formations I’d never seen before. You could get the idea that early spelunkers in this area were hungry men.

But the real high point was getting to see glow worms up close, in the light. You see, the “worms” are actually fly larvae that pick a niche in the rock, exude a long beaded string of sticky worm spit, then emit a faint green glow to attract small flying insects. When the insects get stuck in the string, the larva slurps it up, has a nice snack, and starts over.

Caiser brought us to a section of the cave where we could look at these little goobers up close. And hey, Devon’s the bio-nerd of the family, but I was tickled pink. Two thumbs up here, both for the cave, and our guide. (Caiser says, by the way, that tours get up to 15-16 people, but if you pick the last one of the day, you’re more likely to get a small group. Also, the guide might be inclined to take a little longer and show you his/her favorite off-the-beaten-path bits.)

Okay. Whew.

After that, we only had a couple of hours to spare before we needed to beeline it to Auckland to drop off the campervan. So, obviously, there was only time for the most important remaining sight we’d not seen.

By which I don’t mean the statue of Richard O’Brien in downtown Hamilton. But that’s what we went off to see, anyway.

There are those of you (“It’s just a jump to the left…”) who immediately knew who Richard O’Brien was (“And then a step to the riiiiight”). Or is – apparently he’s a hale 82 years now and just chalked up another film credit this year. And there are those of you (“You put your hands on your hips…”) who haven’t seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show (“And bring your knees in tiiiiight”), which he wrote – both stage and screenplay – and co-starred in as the unforgettable Riff Raff.

So there’s a statue of him, as Riff Raff along Victoria Street in Hamilton, at the former site of the barber shop where he used to cut hair. (Note: anyone who’s familiar with Rocky Horror will delight in the irony of O’Brien’s former vocation.)

photo credit: Mina @ rockyhorrorwiki.org

At least, there used to be a statue of him there. But the Atlas Obscura entry for the site indicated that it had been moved a few blocks south, to the courtyard of the Waikato Museum while construction was going on. So that’s where we headed.

No statue in sight, and the docent inside the museum clearly hadn’t seen Rocky Horror. I’d asked casually, offhand about the statue – I couldn’t bring myself to confess that we weren’t here to look at the museum’s spectacular architecture or priceless collection of Maori treasures. No, we’d only come to her beloved city to check out an homage to a weird cult classic actor. So we browsed the museum for five or ten minutes and then, when the docent in question was out of sight, bolted.

No Riff Raff at the original site, either – just, as expected, a construction site. The fan site provided no further information either, so with heavy hearts, we turned the wonky jellybean campervan north for our final stop by the Auckland airport.

Which, now, over 24 hours later, we’re still contemplating with a renewed eagerness to depart.

Okay. That’s the North Island wrap up – I hope. As I said, I’m not going to hit “send” on this until we clear NZ airspace, so as not to jinx us again.