Shine, Little Glowworm, Glimmer

I wrote this on Thursday and had wonky internet at the delightful little farm cottage that was our Rotorua home. Posting on Sunday.

I doubt I’ll come up with song titles for every post. We’ll see.

We packed up and headed south out of Auckland this morning. David is relieved to be done with city driving for a while. He’s getting pretty good at the left side of the road and has navigated quite a few rotaries without incident. And he’ll eventually stop turning on the windshield wipers every time he wants to signal for a turn. Full disclosure: I have repeatedly walked around to the wrong side of the car. The passenger seat is on the left.

It took us about three hours to get to Waitomo. We drove out of the basalt formations that formed the base of yesterday’s waterfall into karst topography - limestone that has been dissolved and eroded by water. When limestone dissolves, it often leaves caves, and there are three large caves in Waitomo. We skipped the high-adventure tour that starts with abseiling (rappelling) down into the cave and ends with a long stretch of crawling out through a tunnel. The accessible 90-minute stroll was much more our speed. The cave is spectacular with huge stalactites and stalagmites and rooms that are 50 meters high.

That would have been worth the price of admission even without the glowworms. Yup. Glowworms.

The river that formed the cave still runs through it, and the worms live on the walls and ceilings near the river. Insects are drawn in to the water and can’t get out, so they fly toward the light thinking it’s an escape and the glowworms literally reel them in with tiny fishing lines. 

Oh, and more formations.

We left the caves and headed back north a few kilometers to the Otorohanga Kiwi House where we did indeed see a kiwi. We can’t share that with you because kiwi are nocturnal and we saw it very dimly in a habitat designed to mimic nighttime. We also saw parakeets, ducks, eels, geckos, and one heron with an attitude.

We’re now checked into a lovely little cottage on the grounds of a working farm. See? Working farm. 

The only way this could be more different from our Auckland high-rise would be if we were in a tent. Civilization isn’t far away, though. We drove into Rotarua for dinner at Atticus Finch. Yes, it’s a tapas bar inspired by “To Kill a Mockingbird” and it’s in New Zealand. Our cocktails were the Harper Lee (me) and the Mr Radley (David). The food was excellent - the highlight were subtly flavored pork dumplings - and as far as we could see had nothing to do with the book. 

Tomorrow: all geology all the time.