Maori, Glow Worms, and Caving

November 7

Glow worms are cute.  They're about an inch long, with a bioluminescent area near their "tail."  I exaggerate a bit....we didn't actually see the worms themselves, but we saw lots of glow worm bioluminescence, in two different natural locations.

The first was at the Maori experience that my 2nd favorite Jeff recommended.  We went to their site, took a short walk, saw the Maori warriors arrive by canoe, then watched a performance.  The visitors' chief was German....but not nearly as fun or creative as Chief Koen.  The performance was quite good, with a variety of things -- Haka (war dance), examples of training, demonstrations of weapons, etc.  Then we ate a tasty meal of (mostly) food cooked underground in the traditional Maori Hangi style.  After dinner we took another walk and got to see the glow worms.

The second was today, at Waitomo Cave.  We actually toured 2 different limestone caves. We arrived a bit early for our first cave tour, noticed a nearby geocache and found it even though it was a multi.  We didn't have high expectations, but the formations inside the cave were quite impressive -- stalactites, stalagmites, columns, flowstone.  Perhaps the coolest was some two pieces of flowstone right next to each other, one white and the other red (from iron oxide).  The second cave was much less interesting formation-wise, but we walked a bit, then got into a boat and were warned to keep quiet.  The boat moved quietly through the water, and looking up was like stargazing, only instead of stars it was glow worms everywhere.  Their color is blueish green, and each worm's lite is small but together....wow!