Abbey Caves

The Abbey Caves just outside of Whangerei are open for the public to explore as they wish – and they're free. If you want to go, you need solid close-toed shoes, a torch (in North America we call these flashlights), and it is highly recommended that you wear a helmet. So naturally, I went in without head gear in my bare feet sharing the 'flashlight app' on my phone with two other people. You go girl.

The Waitomo Caves are the popular ones in New Zealand, you may remember when I went there. That adventure cost around $100, but we got two tour guides, a wet suit, and an inner tube – not to mention the whole amazing tour. Basically, well worth the price of admission. There are a few other glow worm caves throughout New Zealand, including the ones here in Whangerei. The Abbey Caves are about 9km away from my backpackers, and with the current open wound on the bottom of my foot, I expected to miss them. Considering I've been to the world famous Waitomo Caves, I didn't really care. But when the guy at the carpark offered to drive us there, I really couldn't turn down the offer.

To get to the cave entrance, we walked through a beautiful farmers field, and then paused to re-assess. Do we really wanted to crawl into this dark, wet hole with inadequate gear? Well, we've made it this far already. So we hid our bags and shoes behind a rock, and slid down the first set of stones into the cave. The glow worms were not far from the entrance. I wish I could do these little phosphorescent bugs more justice than to simply describe them as little points of light above you. Even saying that to look up at them is like staring up at the milky way doesn't feel like it's enough. You really need to go into these caves yourselves. We walked in to the caves for about half an hour, splashing in shallow water, climbing over boulders, and wading through pools of water that were higher than my waist. We climbed up mini waterfalls and walked through some kind of grassy weeds that I don't want to think about for too long. I don't want to think about it because other than the glow worms, there is no light in the caves – so how are these plants be growing?! I also tried not thinking about the other things I had heard about, like the cave eels or weta bugs. Luckily, I didn't encounter either.

On the entire way in, I had my phone in my hand, trying to shine the light so everyone could use it. Minna and Elsa didn't complain at all. On the way back, Minna held the light for a while and I was able to fully appreciate how well these girls stumbled through the caves in the dark. You just have to trust that your foot will land where it is supposed to. The cave walk probably would have been a lot easier if I hadn't have brought my expensive, non-waterproof camera in with me. But I did get a cool picture of the glowworms!