Day 12: Waitomo Glow Worm Cave Tour

As weird as it sounds, the experience was actually like Disneyland! The Waitomo Glowworm Caves were awesome. The tour was about an hour long, and the first 30 minutes involved walking through the inside of the caves.

outside the caves (we couldnt bring our own camera inside)

Our guide was a descendent of the Mauri, and extremely informative and passionate about the caves and glowworms.

I won't go into detail about glow worms, but they are only found in New Zealand, and are essentially bugs that spin a web hanging down like a string to catch prey that looks like this in the light:

They produce a chemical light to attract other insects to their web, creating a cave lined with tiny lights.

The second half of our tour was on a boat floating down a river in the cave. It was absurd. It honestly looks like you're floating down Pirates of the Caribbean or It's a Small World, but even more amazing.

Here are some pictures, but even they don't do the caves justice. Its was beautiful!

Since the entire town of Waitomo consisted of about 3 hostels, a visitors center, and a couple shops/diners/bars (all in one of course), there wasn't too much selection to chose from for dinner and we headed off to Curly's Bar/Internet Cafe(dial-up)/Diner for dinner - a cute little place where we had dinner and desert :)