It's been a day of waiting. I woke up early and wandered the mean street of Waitomo, then we loitered until an i-Site opened up so we could book a Waitomo cave "tubing" ticket and loiter some more. After all our waiting we were rewarded with a glow worm* tour of the caves. It was a walk, crawl, slide through a cave, about 1.5 km of cave. The glow worms have a tail light that shines during their pupae stage. The caves had been compared to the night sky and the glow worms stars, but I thought they looked more like a city at night when a plane is landing. The lights tended to extend more like a peninsula and less like the cosmos.
We wore wetsuits in the caves. I can only imagine what discovering those caves must have been like, the glow, the strands (like a spider's web) hanging from the ceiling. Our moment of faux-discovery was a waterfall. We had to earn it by wading through waist deep water and then crawling through a space that would have scared me heaps if I'd come across it on my own. We emerged under a seven meter falls and it was pretty neat. From there it was more glowing and more tubing, not to mention a slide and a backwards hop onto our tube. All in all kind of fun.
The drive to the airport, complete with lap sandwiches, lead us to a delayed flight that finally got us to the South Island. The window seat was glorious. The South Island mountains had snow on top. The scenery was gorgeous- LOTR gorgeous. I'm excited again. To top it off, our hostel for the night is a converted jailhouse and they've tried to stick with the theme. I swear the lights clanked off. We're in a cell in bunk beds. The windows are barred and there are some serious creaking noises. I look forward to seeing daylight. A nice pick by C.
*The worms are insects, so not worms at all.
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