Tour Waitomo caves.

A day of spelunking for Cynthia and a day of black water tubing for David. We arrive together at 11 a.m. at Blackwater Rafting Company’s headquarters where the rather surly blonde millennial babe at the register hands us forms and says, “fill them out and hand ‘em back.” Not, “hi” or “Are you here for a tour?” David says he’s going on the Black Labyrinth tour but Cynthia’s taking three separate tours, each of different cave systems. The millennial says, “Cynthia, you’ll have to drive a car to each. Here’s a map.”

We had expected some transportation. So be it … not. David is told to go left and Cynthia leaves for her first turn behind the wheel in NZ.

Cynthia drives without mishap 7-8 kilometers down Tumutumu Road to her first cave, Aranui, which is atmospheric and “delicate”: dry, no rivers inside.

Cynthia returns 9k back on the same road, just past our hotel, where she finds a large chi-chi wooden pavilion inhabited by half the Chinese population of Shantung Province queuing to walk into a cave. One family has venerable ancestors with canes and the young son, after the tour group’s murmur of displeasure is louder than the subterranean river, puts her on his back and carries her through the rest of the tour. The guide gives cute Pokémon-esque names to every mineral formation in the cave, which the Chinese seem to devour and which means Cynthia gets zero information about the geological formation of the place she has traveled 13,000 miles to learn about.

Cynthia and her tour board 25-person boats that float 50 feet from their underground dock — jabber, jabber, click, click, click — and return to the dock so everyone can leave tour number two. Cynthia has some choice and deleted comments about this portion of the 3-cave tour.

Her third cave, Ruakuri, makes her day. Her guide, Jim, is informative, and the cave has a variety of different formations, fossils in the walls and glowworms like constellations in a black velvet sky. (See glow worm “webs” above.) The Maori don’t go into the caves for respect and fear of spirits, leaving their bones at the entrances.

Meanwhile, David gets into his first wetsuit, fervently hoping no one has peed in it, and joins a group of seven people led by a cute guide named Kiwi (how hard is that to remember?). We are bussed to a river where we practice jumping backwards, holding our inflated inner tubes beneath us, off a platform into a river. We practice this maneuver because we will have to jump off waterfalls inside the cave. Then we practice sitting in our tubes on the tarmac by the river, putting our feet around the person in front of us to form a giant centipede because we’re going to have to float backwards with NO light when we reach the main caverns for glowworms at the end of our subterranean journey.

We enter our cave where the water initially is shallow and, as it gets deeper over increasingly uneven stones and narrower channels, sounds like a train chuffing all around us, the sound rising and falling rhythmically. Later, it will become a constant, deafening roar. Surprisingly to me, the thick wet suit works wonders and I am not cold at all.

As we slide down our first descent into the main subterranean river, another David — married five days ago in Philadelphia and on a honeymoon with Katie — loses his wedding ring but stays mum about it the whole tour so he doesn’t bum out the rest of us.

If you know anything about the life cycle of glowworms — to David Grant’s mind some of the most nakedly Darwinian of creatures — you will appreciate the comment David from Philly may make in the future: “At least I can say I lost my ring in a most shitty place.”

David Grant’s lucky to be on this tour, which began at 11 a.m.; the 9 a.m. tour was cancelled due to high water. At some places during David’s “float,” the water was three inches above his nose for about 100 yards. The rushing force of the current is strong enough to knock you off your feet if you stand without seriously bracing.

Cynthia and I go to HuHu Restaurant for dinner: very nice food and superb view from back balcony as we sit outside under awning. After dinner, we do a night time hike on the Ruakuri Trail.  There are glowworms all along trail and is so much more natural an experience.  Cynthia recommends this free hike instead of the big cave ride.  Then back to the “Redrum” for a night’s sleep.

Another day in Paradise.