(written on the 28th!)
I don’t know if I’ve gotten a full night’s sleep more than just one or two times since I’ve been in New Zealand. 🙃
Probably most of that is just that I haven’t been disciplined enough to go to bed at a decent hour 😅, and the sun comes up so early here that I just can’t manage to stay asleep. Another part of that is just being uncomfortable at night, partly because the “bed” itself doesn’t lend itself to comfort, and partly because of my nerve issues.
I wouldn’t say that I’m exhausted all the time: I’m not. But I am often tired, getting maybe 6 hours of sleep a night?
I think for a good chunk of my adult hood, for my brain to work properly, I’ve needed about 9, not that my brain has worked properly much at all in the last 20 years, so who knows at this point. 😆
Anyway, I think I did maybe a little better last night?
Either way, I got moving relatively early this morning compared to other days, on the road by some time around 8:30.
First stop of the day was the Karetu Scenic Reserve to visit an out of the way waterfall in an out of the way part of the North Island. So I left the Freedom camping area in the back of the army museum and headed out of the little town of Waiouru, South on highway 1 until I got to the little gravel road that would go into the hills.
If I haven’t mentioned it already, there are tons of gravel roads that I drive on pretty much every day through the back country of New Zealand, and much of the time they’re just barely wide enough to handle one vehicle going in each direction (and frequently with very steep hills or drop-offs on one side 🙃). In order to be safe and not accidentally smash each other’s mirrors off or side swipe each other, both vehicles pull over to the far sides of the road as possible.
Generally come when you cross bridges, it goes down to one lane, so there are signs letting the driver on each side of the road which one has the right of way, so the other one pulls to a stop to let the driver with the right of way across the bridge first.
It also happens on those little back roads that there’s only room for one car, so one either has to back up, or if there’s enough room, then you pull off into the grass or shrubs or whatever.
Nearly universally, unless you’re driving through a town or forest, the entirety of the North Island is pretty much one ranch after another, either cows or sheep, regardless of how steep the terrain (and that terrain is often incredibly steep, which gives rise to one of my favorite features of almost certainly the most common New Zealand landscape–moderate to extremely steep hillsides with step-like trails from bottom to top, such that the hills look like giant wash boards.
It’s that step-like terrain that causes the shadows that make up so much of the rich contrast of those various vibrant green colors that I’ve talked about in the past that just dazzle the eyes.
It’s not lost on me that what brings about such mesmerizingly beautiful and vibrant color contrasts is the livestock industry, which I’m… not so fond of. 😕
Certainly a better life than the poor chickens in Arkansas, but still…
Without all the livestock, the entire Island would pretty much just be thick forest.
Aaaaaanyway… I think the north half of the North Island is a lot more cow dense, while the south half of the North Island is much more sheep dense.
It’s been so long since I’ve been to the South Island that I don’t remember what the ranching is like there.
Back to the day. 🙃
So I was driving through the New Zealand back country on a little gravel road through massive sheep ranches, but when I got to where Google said the scene reserve was, it wasn’t there.
It’s not uncommon for Google to give me bad directions. Sometimes it takes me to the wrong side of a river. Sometimes it tries to get me where I’m going via a private road, and sometimes the locations that I’m going to are actually on private land, and that’s not stated in the description of the area, so I make a drive all the way to a certain place only to realize that it’s on private land, and I need to ask permission from the landowner to visit the natural attraction on their property.
Anyway, I couldn’t find the place. Or better said, I could see the waterfall from the road down in the mini canyon below, but there was ranch fencing all along the road, with the sign for the reserve nowhere in site.
I’ve been to so many waterfalls. Did I want to go to the effort to try and figure out how to get to this one?
I drove up and down the road, looking for the sign.
I looked online again… “hunting reserve.” I hadn’t noticed that before. Did that mean that I needed some kind of permission?
I sent an email to the district council for that area asking about it, but then I realized it was saturday, so I wasn’t going to hear back from them in any useful time–for me, at least.
Reading through some of the reviews, they mentioned just parking along the side of the road and hopping the fence and going down to the waterfall.
I didn’t want to hop the fence, but I did find a gate that maybe was the entrance I was supposed to go in? The tire tracks down the hill from the gate went over to a bunch of beehives, but it’s not uncommon to have designated reserves have gates and trails that go through private property by design–agreements between the land owners and the local district councils.
So I decided to go ahead and go through the gate and head down to the waterfall.
Beautiful little spot. 😊
Had it not been for the fact that something in the water made it sort of… nasty… It would have been a great place to hang out and stare at the beauty, go for a swim, etc.
But it was really slimy everywhere, and the water was a bit discolored and nasty looking. 😅
Unfortunately, that’s pretty common in the North Island. I’m not sure how much of that has to do with all the livestock feces when it rains, or just sediment runoff, or what, but some rivers are straight up brown from all the stuff in them, and some are sort of a nasty color, and some of them are clear as clear can be.
From there I headed to Turakina Valley Waterfall, which is just a beautiful waterfall right off the gravel road out in the hills. I didn’t spend much of any time there, just snapped a few pictures and enjoyed the view for a minute and then headed off to the next stop in Mangaweka, a waterfall over the side of a canyon with some enormous mudstone cliff walls.
After trying to get gas in Mangaweka and failing, because it was a self-serve machine-operated place and my credit cards don’t work at those, I headed over to the waterfall which… was not a waterfall today but a trickle down the cliffside. 😆
Oh well, the views were still absolutely gorgeous, the massive cliffs, the river below with what looked like just a touch of glacier-melt-blue color to it.
It was still early in the day when I made it to my next stop–Limestone Creek Reserve–way back out in the middle of nowhere in another gravel road.
I got there about 2:15 in the afternoon, which would normally be great because it would allow me to see that site plus potentially several others in the day, eeeeeexcept that this particular visit was to a glow worm cave/tunnel with entrances on both sides and the top allowing a lot of light in, meaning good views of glow worms, if there were going to be any, would not likely be possible.
What to do…
I really wanted to check the place out because it seemed like it could be a great little glow-worm place, but that would mean either driving far away and then coming back, and I wasn’t in the mood to drive a whole ton only to backtrack later.
So I ended up staying.
There were a couple other cars there when I got there, so I just hung out in my van. The fact that it rained a fair bit helped make me feel like hanging out in the van wasn’t such a waste of time.
After maybe a couple hours or so, I being the only person there, and with the rain having stopped, I decided to head down and take a look at the place in the daylight to see what it was like.
It was beautiful. 😊
There was a short walk down a very narrow, wet path from the road above down to the creek below, some of the path had steps, and some of the path had tree roots as steps, both common in New Zealand trails.
Then a short walk through the creek back upstream, and there was the beautiful cave/tunnel entrance.
It really was a cool cave. It was maybe 30-40 feet tall at the tallest but was basically a long triangular shaped tunnel with a little waterfall coming out of one of the holes in the roof toward the far side.
I snapped a few pictures and wandered around enjoying the creek and the formations and whatnot.
Looking up into the cave, I saw maybe a couple two or three glow worms.
What to do… It was pretty, but it seemed like maybe there wouldn’t be much hope for a decent glow worm experience.
Do I wait hours longer in the hopes that maybe it might turn out to be decent? The next stop was another glow-worm place, a “valley walk,” which I figured meant glow worms along the banks of a creek, which I figured probably wasn’t going to be on the same tier as what I’d seen at Waipu Caves, and to a lesser extent, Okupata Caves.
In the end, I decided to stick around. I figured that I had time to visit the other places that I wanted to visit in the South Island before catching the ferry day after tomorrow.
So I waited in the van again, a bunch of college football videos on YouTube and then watching a movie.
A handful more tourists came, the most had come during the day. I think there was maybe only one, maybe two, other cars that came once it started getting dark.
Once the sun was down, and almost all of the vestiges of light had faded to night sky, I grabbed my headlamp and headed back down.
The stream was in a little mini canyon, a pretty sharp drop off on one side and a steep hill on the other.
As I walked, periodically turning my headlamp off, I started seeing glow worms on the cliffside and through the vegetation.
The closer I got to the cave, the more glow worms there were on the cliffside, and it was cool to see how many of them there were.
I was not prepared, however, for what awaited me inside the cave itself. I had seen maybe two or three glow worms walking through the cave earlier in the day, and clearly I had completely forgotten about how massive a difference there is when there’s no light pollution.
Right at the entrance to the cave, maybe just a handful of feet inside, I looked up to see a large, bright cluster of glow worms. It was so much like that first room in Waipu Caves. 😍
But then it just kept getting better and better! As I walked through the cave in the dark, there were more and more and more glow worms. They were everywhere. They were on the walls beside me. They were on the ceiling above me.
It was like being inside this cathedral or something. I don’t know what to call it, but that’s one of the words that came to mind.
It was simply magical. I never expected that.
It was a little cold and wet, with water dripping from the ceiling all over the place, not just from the waterfall a little past the middle on the upstream side of the cave, but I just stood there, a smile plastered on my face, as I stared in awe at the beauty.
I don’t know what it is about the glow worms, but I have never gone into a cave and seen a decent cluster of glow worms without just having happiness flood through me. 😊
As I walked through the cave, I saw a few really bright spots at the far end that I figured was just moonlight coming through the holes in the cave and through the trees at the far end.
Still, I’ve learned that some of the best experiences and some of the best vistas come by exploring all around instead of just taking in one vista.
So I continued all the way to the other end of the cave, even though it was a much larger opening, which meant a lot more light pollution from the moon and stars.
As I walked to the far end of the cave, toward the larger entrance on the other side, what I thought were bright patches of moonlight shining through the trees and holes in the cave above were actually large clusters of glow worms.
😍
It was incredible. This natural cathedral with glowing walls and glowing vaulted ceiling high above my head… I thought maybe it was like being inside a geode. Certainly, it felt like being inside of a planetarium, only better.
I didn’t want to leave, despite the cold water dripping in me again and again and again.
I could have just stayed in there for hours.
Oh how I wanted to have a loved one with me to share the experience.
Never in my wildest did I imagine this was going to be what it was. I thought why poop caves was amazing. And… it is… but there were I think a thousand or more glow worms in this cave. And I wouldn’t be surprised if there were many more than that!
I finally tore myself away around 10:30, trying to encode a mental image in my brain to remember it for the future.
Pictures that I took? They are all but useless. 😕
The experience was so incredible that I figured it was almost foolish to even think about going to the next glow worm site, maybe an hour down the road, as it was this Valley walk which I expected would have a handful of glow worms in the vegetation.
Still, I tend to like to visit all of the places that I can, so despite the lateness of the hour, it being perfect on the one hand for darkness, but not so perfect because I still needed to visit that site and then find some place to camp for the night, I headed south toward Pohangina Valley Glow Worms.
Or at least, I thought I did. I accidentally ended up going the wrong direction at first, not realizing that I had to backtrack before making a different turn. From where I was, going the wrong direction, the road turned into a single lane, and in the dark, given that it was a single lane, I figured that with the little mini cliffs on my left, that it must be a sharp drop off on my right.
Presently, I came to a gate that was the end of the road. 😶
Oops. There wasn’t much room to do a u-turn. There was a bit more room at the end than during the drive there, as there was a little side road that went down sharply to another gate.
I was a little worried about the sharpness of The descent toward that gate from the main gravel, as I only had a two-wheel drive vehicle, and the last thing I needed was to get stuck with my tire spinning on the gravel.
Which… happened. 😅
I backed down into that steep descent toward the gate so that my driving tires were on the uphill side, but then when I tried to drive, they just spun and the whole vehicle started to slide sideways.
Lovely.
Gratefully, I was able to coax some traction and get the van pulled back up onto the road. 😅
Would have been an adventure trying to get myself unstuck from there without help. I probably would have ended up spending the night with a crazy tilt on the bed. But I didn’t have to and was able to drive my way over to the next glow worm site. Oh! And I saw a little hedgehog on the way there. ☺️
It felt a little sketchy for some reason this time. I don’t know why. I was out in the middle of absolute nowhere on a gravel road where there’s just a little break in the fence to let you know where the path starts.
I grabbed my headlamp and locked the van and started down the narrow path, my clothes getting wet with the leftover rainwater on the leaves and ferns that protruded into the path.
Similar to the other place, it was a relatively short walk down to the creek bottom. A lot less water this time.
As I walked along the creek bottom, again I periodically turned my headlamp off, so I could see the glow worms, and there were some here and there.
Because the vegetation was thick, it was hard to get really good views of them. But as I walked along, there were more and more, surprisingly.
I even got to a point where there were so many glow worms along the steep banks that I was once again quite impressed.
I wasn’t sure how far up to go. One of the reviewers mentioned that you’ll know when it ends because you can’t go any further, but… I’m me. 🙃 What one person means by not being able to go any further doesn’t… always transfer. 🙃
Not wanting to end up on a massive expedition after midnight, I was a little apprehensive about continuing, but I did.
And boy am I glad I did.
Holy moly.
In relatively short order, the super steep banks turned into a slot canyon, and the impressive number of glow worms transformed into a starry spectacle even more brilliant than what I had just experienced a couple of hours before.
There I stood, mouth open in an awestruck smile.
How?!?! How could it be so incredible?!?!
The cave at the limestone Creek Reserve had dwarfed even my Waipu Cave experience. And now this…Pohangina Valley Glow Worms has surpassed even that! 😍
The walls of the slot canyon were formed of that kind of sedimentary rock that has whole round stones inside of it.
On I went through the short slot canyon mesmerized by the sheer number of glow worms. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were thousands upon thousands altogether.
Just as one of the reviewers had mentioned, the path did indeed end in a way that was completely obvious, the slot canyon closing itself completely off with a small waterfall dropping down into the beginning of the slot canyon from maybe 20 ft above.
Pure magic.
😊
Never in my wildest did I expect to see what I have seen in these last two stops.
I’m so glad I decided to wait all those hours in what seemed like a waste of time.
I’m so glad I waited until the dark of night. All those others who came by to see these sites during the day would have only caught a glimpse of a couple glow worms, not the thousands upon thousands that I was privileged to see.
Oh what an incredible experience! 😊🙏😊🙏😊
Again, I didn’t want to leave, but it was after 1:00 in the morning, and I still didn’t know exactly where I was going to stay for the night.
Oh how I wish I had someone to share the experience with!!!
What an incredible day. 😊
Finally tearing myself away, I made the walk back through the creek bottom, up the hillside to the road, and then drove away.
Will I ever come back? I don’t know. I hope so, but you just never know what life will bring.
The route I expected to take to my desired Freedom camping spot ended up having a bridge out. 😅 Gratefully, Google Maps was wrong, and where it showed a road end at river, there actually was another Bridge, so I was able to cross the river and head south on the opposite side of the river and make it to the Freedom Camping place at the Raumai Reserve about 1:30 a.m., where I was quite happy to have a bathroom to use before crashing into bed.
On a day that went pretty much exactly as planned, what an unexpected day it turned out to be!
Wow. Just… wow. 😍
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 