Floating under maggots with glowing poo (as they say in NZ)

We've had a busy couple of days here on the north island. We spent a night right outside Egmont National Park at a place called The Missing Leg. We slept in the van but the place had an excellent lodge with a wood stove and comfy couches. It was great. Yesterday morning we did a hike on Mt. Taranaki (it's actually a volcano). The hike was supposed to be 5 hours round trip. At Evan's pace, or actually slightly slower because I decided not to die, we did it in 3 hours.

After that we drove to Waitomo Caves. It's beautiful but, as you can tell from the above "upcoming events" sign...not much going on.

Today we spiced it up, big time. Here in Waitomo Caves are the Waitomo Caves (figures, eh?). We set up a "black abyss" tour into the caves which happen to be filled with glow worms. Any one remember glow worms from the late 80s? The toys? Yeah, not those (although I'm totally going to look for mine in the attic). These "glow worms" are actually the larvae of the fungus gnat (larvae of flys = maggots) and as they hang from the top of the caves and glow like stars in the night sky the glowing is actually a chemical reaction with their waste (poo) which, in turn, helps them attract more prey. That being said, they are pretty freakin cool. Oh, and apparently the water in the caves - filled with rats and eels. Luckily we didn't see any of those.

So our tour began with a ridiculous wetsuit and gum boot (like galoshes) outfit. We then repelled about 110 feet down a hole in the ground. That was followed by a brief walk and then a flying fox (zip line) through a cave in the pitch black filled with glow worms. Then they gave us a small snack, handed us some floating tubes and directed us to jump, ass-in-tube first, off a cliff down about 10-15 feet into the freezing cold water. We then pulled ourselves upstream for a ways (still ass-in-tube) and floated gently down in pitch black under glow worms.

From there we abandoned our tubes and began walking (falling), swimming, and floating through the caves sometimes in the dark and sometimes lit only by our helmet lamps. We slid over a waterfall, jumped off a waterfall, rock climbed up 3 waterfalls, crawled on elbows and knees through tiny muddy passages (during which Evan said "I feel like I'm back in 'nam"), and slid down a couple small cliffs. Even with the freezing cold water it was awesome!

And now it's sunny and springtime-like. This is the New Zealand I came for.