Today we drove out toward the west coast to Waitomo. It is an area filled with several hundred caves, of which about half a dozen have operating tours that you can visit. We chose one that looked quite interesting and took us to two caves. The first was a good example with lots of formations (stalagmites and stalactites, cave cauliflower, etc). We spent about 45 minutes in that cave. There were bones from a few animals that wandered in and never made it out. In a few places there were small chutes that opened to the sky above, and that is where the bones of a cow were found. In another place, there are bones of a now extinct bird (larger than a human). They went extinct about 700 years ago when the locals over-hunted them into extinction.
Here are pictures from the first cave:
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| Riding in our 12 passenger Ford Transit van to the first cave |
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| Stalactites, stalagmites, and columns |
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| Our guide pointing out "Cave Cauliflower" |
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| Cindy and Steve in the "Cathedral" |
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| Great formations |
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| They did a nice job making this cave accessible, and safe |
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| Remnants of that extinct bird I mentioned |
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| Beautiful cave |
We then hopped in the van and drove a few minutes to another cave. This one has a river flowing through it, and we got into a Zodiac-style rubber dinghy and went down the river to see thousands of glowworms on the ceiling. It looked like a night sky.
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| Heading into the glowworm cave. |
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| Our guide wiping the dripping water off the Zodiac. |
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| Glowworms. Sorry, it was hard to capture on camera |
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| The river flowing into the cave |
A few pictures from the "Spellbound Glowworm" tour company they emailed me. These are better than I could capture:
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| Walking back to the van after the glowworm cave |
We then drove to Taupo, which a nice town on a large lake right in the middle of the North Island. We stopped at Huka Falls, which is a very popular tourist destination. It's not a big drop, but rather a river running down a steep slope. Huge volume of water. flowing. After that we walked around town a bit and found an interesting McDonald's.
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The playgound in this McDonalds has an extra feature. A plane you can play in!
We thought that was pretty "cool" |
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| I guess a lot of people agree |
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The is a lot of great scenery here in New Zealand
Huka waterfall in Tuopo, NZ
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