Thousands of "Stars"

Day 5: Waitomo Glowworm Caves

We got up early this morning to catch our bus from Whangarei to Auckland, where we headed to the airport (and met the same Indian bus driver from before – who hooked us up with a massively discounted fare) and picked up our rental car. In NZ, the driver sits on the right of the car and they drive on the left side of the road! With two days of driving ahead of us, you can imagine the tension!

We headed off to Waitomo, a town about 2.5 hrs south of Auckland. The drives here are just surreal. You can see cows and sheep (and sometimes deer and chickens) everywhere, just grazing on hectares upon hectares of bright green grass. They say the grass is always greener on the other side, but in the case of NZ - it's actually true! The grass IS greener here! On our drive, we also saw a rainbow (yay!) and not only did we see the rainbow, we saw the entire thing, end to end - and one of the ends was in the valley right beside us as we drove. So we were actually IN the end of the rainbow - we were IN the pot of gold! It seemed quite befitting, considering the beauty arond us!

So with a very hectic and tight schedule (in which even a minor delay could through everything off) - we finally reached Waitomo to see the Glowworm Caves. We reached just in time for one of the last tours! The walking tour took us through and down a cave about 48 feet below the ground, through a pathway created naturally by rivers running through it many (many) years ago. The caves were limestone and you could see stalagmites and stalagtites throughout. It was just gorgeous! Unfortunately, we couldn’t take any pictures (though it seems like the guide could have been bribed otherwise!)

The limestone, although beautiful, wasn’t the main attraction… it was the glowworms! Glowworms are basically insects that live in the caves and that go through five phases of life. When in their larva phase, they create a little hammock in which they hang at the top of the cave and then set out 20 little mucous fishing lines under their hammock. They emit a neon blue light from their tail, which attracts their prey, and when one gets caught, they pull up the fishing line and – dinner! In the caves, we were taken on a boat ride on the underground river, and the ceiling of the cave was filled with thousands upon thousands of these beautiful blue lights – like thousands of stars a few feet above us in a night sky!

After the tour, we went to a little scenic walk that a guide had told us about. It was pretty dark out, though, and the walk was unlit in the middle of the forest so, with flashlights in hand, we did most of the walk, but headed back out very soon, as the darkness got the better of us!

Anyhoo, after Waitomo, we hopped back onto our tight schedule and made the two-hour drive to Rotorua, a town built around its active volcanic areas. We got to our hostel, dropped off our stuff in our room (that looks like a jail cell or solitary confinement!), and got something to eat (in the only restaurant open in town at 9PM – Korean)! After being in four cities in one day, we are exhausted, but still very excited!