Waitomo Black Water Rafting

This was our Saturday adventure that I had previously mentioned in my earlier post. For the price of $220 NZD, we got a 5 hour excursion through Waitomo's glow-worm caves, including a 140 foot rappel, a flying fox (zip line) in pitch black, sightings of the legendary glow worm caves and traversing up and down under ground rivers and waterfalls. Absolutely a must see and do in New Zealand 100%. Unfortunately for me and from my injuries incurred the previous day the wet suit hurt like hell for the first hour but I quickly got over it once the action got going. Our tour guides were amazing and fun to be around. Had I decided not to go to Taupo this weekend I might never have gotten another chance to go and have the same opportunity - what a good decision that was.

Step 1: Abseil into the cave!

Interesting facts about glow-worms now: First, they aren't worms but rather maggots at the stage you currently see them at (but they can't say glow-maggot cave because no one would show up haha); second, what you see isn't the maggot itself but rather its waste! This is part of it's evolution because whatever insects or bugs currently living in the cave will look for daylight to get out - when they see the light of the maggot's waste they head for it thinking its a way out - but its a trap with sticky threads hanging from the ceiling that will trap them and suck them up to the maggot where he will - excuse me but details are important - open a hole and drink out the victims internal fluids - YA! Next when the maggot turns into a flying insect it only has 3 days to live. So what does it do? It goes around looking for a mate and will mate until death. The female will lay about 150 eggs or so and then she will die shortly thereafter. This information happily relayed from the tour guide (Tom) to me to you!

One of the coolest things about the excursion was seeing these glow-worms. We turned our headlights off and were in inter-tubes so it was a lazy river effect - just look up and enjoy the ride and view. Absolutely incredible.

"Technical term: Stinky stringy thingy's of death" - Tom the guide