Waitomo caves

Waitomo caves is truly a unique experience. My friends Lara and Gabby and I rented a car and drove 4 hours south to the town of Waitomo. We pent the night camping and went to the local bar, which was a very interesting people watching experience. In the morning we woke up early and went to the caves. We were dressed in gum boots (wellingtons) and wet suits. We took a van ride to the training area. There were briefly trained in how to repel down into the caves. Then we took a five minute walk to this hole in the ground that did not look like it could be the cave. It was very small, and very deep. I was the first to go down. It was completely dark except for my head lamp. There were parts where my back touched the side and front. The small hole opened up into a larger cavern. In total we repelled 100 feet down. From there we walked through the cave until we got to the flying fox (zip line) were we glided in the dark over a huge hole.

Then we had snack time! Hot chocolate and biscuits (cookies) There was a black river about 7 feet below us. We were given inner tubes and told to jump in. Once we took the plunge into water, we begun to float and paddle down the river. It was not fast or deep and very cold. As we floated along the guide pointed out formations. We turned off our lights to look at the 1000s of glow worm above us.

The glow worms are actually maggots, and the glowing is not the worms, but their poop. They let strings of spit drip down from their mouth, in order to catch their prey. They then send down a drop of poison to paralyze their victims, and bring the saliva and meal into their mouths. Once they maggots become flys, they have 3 days to live. They are born without mouths, and 70% o their bodies are taken up by reproductive organs I was told by my guide to say I met strangers who dressed me up in rubber suits where I followed them into a deep dark hold where there were carnivorous maggots with shinny shit that shag themselves to death.

We spent a lot of time floating around and looking at the glow worms. They cave in the dark looked like the night sky covered with thousands of stars. who knew maggots could be so pretty?

About 2/3 of the way through we ditched the inner tubes and walked through he river to two waterfalls, that we proceeded to climb. it was very very cool. We "found" a moa bone. For those who do not know what a Moa is, it is a bird that sued to only live on New Zealand, but now is extinct. It is a huge flightless ostrich basically. We crawled through some very small spaces, up through holes, and ended up outside again. All and all amazing.