Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Waitomo "Glow Worm" Caves

We left early this morning (5:45 New Zealand time/3:45 Australian time) to head down to the Waitomo Caves. It took a couple hours, and the countryside was just like Lord of the Rings.

We got to the Rap, Raft n Rock (http://www.caveraft.com/) to check in. We had a small group, just us, our guide Marcus, and a Czeck guy named Marek.

We first donned our gear - wetsuit, jacket, pants, belt, boots, helmet and light. We then practiced abselling and abselled about 100 ft. into the caves. We hiked in the underground river and saw some glow worm caves. The "glow" is on the ceiling, as a byproduct of the larvae there (of a kind of spider/mosquito). When you turn your lights off, it looks like the ceiling is glowing (and so other bugs think so too, and are caught in the webs of the larvae).

We hiked, rafted, did a little spelunking, and ended with rock-climbing ourselves out (which was quite tiring since it was our last thing).

We drove to the "farm" that Matt's parents have. About 7500 acres with mostly sheep and some cows. Met Matt's parents and had some of Julie's great lasagna!

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