Waitomo Caves - New Zealand
January 11, 2007 was one of the best days of my life (thus far). Colleen and I headed out early to Waitomo caves, 2 1/2 hours south of Auckland.
There we got a 5 hour tour of Ruakuri cave and its infamous glow worms (which we later found out were really maggots of a kind of fly. Their poop glows to attract bugs to their webs where they suck out their innards while the bugs are still alive - GROSS!) But regardless, the glowing on teh ceiling above was magnificent and resembled a starry night sky.
We rappelled one at a time 35 meters down into the cave (I was the first girl to go!) Once we got to the bottom we had to wait in pitch black for the others...it was a weird sensation having conversations with strangers, but not being able to see a single thing!
Once everyone was down we ziplined in the pitch black to the other part of the cave! Scary!
Then, it was cliff jumping time. We had to jump off a ledge in the cave to the underground, icy cold river below. We got an innertube to float in, but sadly, I flipped mine over once I hit the water - BRRRRR!
After river floating it was hiking time...we made our way through the labyrinth walkways - sliding down a natural slide, checking out checking out strange rock formations, touch fossilized whale bones embedded into the cave floor - and then climbed up twin waterfalls to get back up to the surface and daylight!
On the way back to Auckland we stopped at the Angora Bunny Sheering Shed - kind of like the cheese shops all over Wisconsin!
And just when I thought the day couldn't get any better, we went to Burger Wisconsin!!!
There we got a 5 hour tour of Ruakuri cave and its infamous glow worms (which we later found out were really maggots of a kind of fly. Their poop glows to attract bugs to their webs where they suck out their innards while the bugs are still alive - GROSS!) But regardless, the glowing on teh ceiling above was magnificent and resembled a starry night sky.
We rappelled one at a time 35 meters down into the cave (I was the first girl to go!) Once we got to the bottom we had to wait in pitch black for the others...it was a weird sensation having conversations with strangers, but not being able to see a single thing!
Once everyone was down we ziplined in the pitch black to the other part of the cave! Scary!
Then, it was cliff jumping time. We had to jump off a ledge in the cave to the underground, icy cold river below. We got an innertube to float in, but sadly, I flipped mine over once I hit the water - BRRRRR!
After river floating it was hiking time...we made our way through the labyrinth walkways - sliding down a natural slide, checking out checking out strange rock formations, touch fossilized whale bones embedded into the cave floor - and then climbed up twin waterfalls to get back up to the surface and daylight!
On the way back to Auckland we stopped at the Angora Bunny Sheering Shed - kind of like the cheese shops all over Wisconsin!
And just when I thought the day couldn't get any better, we went to Burger Wisconsin!!!
posted by Tracy @ 7:23 AM
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