Glowworm Caves
Waitomo, New Zealand - Day 3
Glowworms are fascinating little creatures. As worms, they live on the ceiling of dark caves emitting a blue-green light. Similar to spiders they surround their home with traps, in their case up to twenty five dangling 'mucous ropes.' Insects, seeing the glow worms light, fly up to it thinking its the sun or moon and get stuck. The glowworm then sucks in the 'mucous rope' and has a snack before producing another rope. Glowworms at the worm (or more accurately maggot) stage are all female. When they turn into flies, the last stage of their life, they become male with the only goal of reproducing as many times and as fast as possible. This is mostly because they will only live for a few days as their fly stage doesn't have a stomach or even a mouth and they will starve to death if they don't get stuck on a rope and eaten. Unfortunately, the tour operators do not allow photography in the glowworm caves so I couldn't get any pictures. That is a shame too because at one point we were on a boat, in complete darkness, floating down a cave river gazing up at hundreds of beautiful blue green lights. These lights also reflecting in the water making it seem even more magical. Your mind, akin to starring at the stars, starts to find shapes in the arrangements. The boat floated down the river and out the mouth of the cave. Aranui is a more traditional cave experience. After a short hike up some hills we entered the cave and explored its formations.
Close by these caves, is Marokopa falls. A beautiful wide, multi stage waterfall just a fifteen minute hike off the road. Katie and I decided to whip the drone out again and got some beautiful shots of this amazing waterfall. One shot was directly over the top, looking straight down from the perspective of a bird flying over the falls. I was worried that the drone might bother people here in New Zealand, but actually everyone is really interested and it is a big conversation starter. We returned to the car and made our way back on picturesque, winding two way roads through the hills and mountains, stopping in Cambridge for dinner. The restaurant is called Onyx and we had garlic bread and a chicken, brie, parmesan, chopped nuts, and cranberry sauce pizza. Sounds like odd toppings, but it was delicious. We ended our day under the awning of Onyx, enjoying our dinner, the cool breeze, and a light rain.
