Since today was supposed to be a gloomy day, we decided it would be the perfect day to visit the glow-worm caves in Waitomo. They are completely tourist-ized, but as such are a quite safe way to see these New Zealand natives. The glow worms are actually larvae for the fungus midge. The midges sit on the ceiling, and drop sticky threads to catch food. The light they emit lights up their thread and attracts prey.

We chose to do a ‘blackwater rafting’ trip, where you have an inner tube, and you tube down the river inside the cave, looking up in the dark at the glow-worm colonies. We were in the cave for about an hour with a group of 12 folks and 3 guides. We spent a bit of time hiking in the cave, then the guides helped us over some small waterfalls, before we peacefully floated through the rest of the cave, checking out the ‘worms’.  It was a little like looking up into the night sky with no light pollution, except these worms were brighter and there were a lot more of them. It was really great; not just the worms, but also the caving. It was over much too quickly, and we took a short hike out of the forest back to the vans.

We ordered the picture CD from the tour company, and it has some great photos on it, including some of us in the cave (in our adorable hard hats and wetsuits… the water was 12°C!). However, it’s a CD, and our netbook doesn’t have a CD drive, so we can’t upload those pictures until we get home.  But in the meantime, we also took a hike around the caves, and took a picture of the stream coming out of one.

After all this caving and exploring, we got back in the van and drove to our next destination, Rotorua. It’s a geothermally active area, but fortunately our campsite was far enough out of town that it didn’t smell like sulfur all night!

On the way, we stopped at the Kiwi house. It was closed 🙁 but we took a picture with the giant kiwi statue anyhow!