Caving with Glowworms

On our second day in Auckland, we took a tour bus to the Glowworm Caves in Waitomo.  The driver prompted us to "pop inside for our bits and bobs," where they provided us with a lovely breakfast that Eric dubbed the "kitchen sink muffin" as it contained a variety of assorted seeds, vegetables, and cheese.  We also discovered the delicious Feijoa fruit.  We drove for about two hours through hilly, emerald green pastures covered with hundreds of sheep and cows.  

The Waitomo Glowworm Caves were outstanding!  We disembarked the bus and were greeted by our very friendly Maori tour guide.  We descended about 100 feet down a narrow, dark tunnel to an underground river where she ushered us into a little boat.  She turned off her flashlight (our only light source) and pulled the boat along the river using rope that had been suspended between the walls of the cave.  When we looked up above us, thousands of tiny green lights lit the cave ceiling in a pattern that I can only describe as a constellation of non-flashing-lightning-bug-esque stars.
  

The guide turned the light back on and we saw hundreds of gossamer strands hanging from the ceiling.  Apparently glowworms are rather akin to spiders. They suspend web-like threads and unsuspecting bugs are attracted to the worms' glow.  When a bug flies into the trap, the glowworm is able to retract the thread in a fraction of a second to feast on the captured prey. Gross, but cool-gross.

After our boat ride ended, we were escorted through the rest of the caves. They told us that they host an annual Christmas carol concert in the biggest cavern, which sounded amazing to me.  The acoustics must be spectacular!

When our spelunking experience came to a close, our tour bus took us to lunch at the Big Apple Cafe.  I especially liked the massive 20-ft apple outside.  We ate lunch out back on the veranda overlooking one of the many farms in the region.  For some reason it was interesting to me to see a tractor and sheep surrounded by ferns and palm trees.  

Tyler & Stephanie--gotta ask--trees or vines?  Just to be clear, we're looking at the photo above, in the bottom-left quadrant, at the rows behind Eric.  In this case, Tyler, you would be correct: vines.