Down Under Down Under

This post is full of win and pics that make me look awesome. 

Waitomo is famous for its geography. Here there be caves. And in those caves there be glow worms.

Unfortunately in those caves it also be dark. So my gopro footage was useless. And the glow worms dont really glow when flashes are going off so none of that cool stuff either. Thats ok though. This is an experience best had first hand. 

 The tour we had was with Caveworld here in town. (Across the street, actually.) There were 5 of us today, Rodney, our guide and a couple for Toronto. Steve and ...ummm yeah we never did get her name.

 Pics here were all taken by Rodney. A good guide who really did a good job of making us not feel safe down there. All fun and games tho. For all of Rodneys ghost stories and such, the journey was safely traveled without any real danger.

He drove us out parked were we grabbed our inner tubes. Then across a farmers field to some stairs that took us down to the entrance of the cave. I had about 30 seconds of unease but as things got going I started to relax and have fun.

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 The english name of the cave is whistle foot due to the formation behind us.

 At our lowest point, we were 100m below the farmers field above us. After a few photo ops, the lights went off . We got comfy in our tubes and started to float through the waterways of the cave. Looking up we could see hundreds of thousands of glow worms hanging from the cave ceiling.

The worms are long and stringy and hang from the ceiling. They catch their food, insects that wonder in. It's their poo that is luminescent and glows in the dark. Rodney let off a loud popping noise to prove the point.  The ceiling lit up with little blue dots.

These pics are a good illustration of why im not an action star. We had to make our way over a couple of water falls in the caves. One 2 meters high. The other 7, which we found had  a cool water slide to get us down it. I love water slides!

My best pic ever, just before the slide.

2 more Canadians delivered safely to the top.

We took a break then went on a short road trip to do some sight seeing in the Waitomo area.

Mangapohue is a  natural bridge formation in the area.

 

And Marokopa is a rather Epic looking water fall .

 

We head for Rotorua tomorrow.