New Zealand day 2: glow worm caves

Woke up almost refreshed at 6am, microwaved our quiche had coffee and planned out the drive. 2 hours to waitmo to see the glow worm caves. Filled up the gas tank and picked up some Coke Zero for the drive and we were off.

Drove two hours through winding hillsides spotted with cows and sheep. I think there is more livestock on this island than people. T-Mobile service was rather spotty the entire trek but we got matt a New Zealand SIM card at the airport with 1g of data for 20$. So we used his phone. Bought our tickets for the glow worm cave online off the side of a road in some farmland. Most of the roads here are two lane with blind turns and hills where you can't see the bottom. Bought he tickets online for 11am entrance and we were going to arrive by 1020 per Google.

Arrived to the glowworm caves as expected and waited the half hour before our time. These caves were discovered and mapped out and opened to the public in 1886. The caves are home to glow worms-- they emit bioluminescence at their connection with the ceiling of the cave which attract flies to it tricking the fly into thinking it's an exit-- meanwhile the glowworm has a tentacle like sting that can reach 30cm long and is sticky and catches the fly--dinner. Glowworm life cycle is 11 months. 8-9 months in the glowworm/tentacle state followed by a cocoon stage and then they turn into a fly which cannot eat and basically starves to death and gets eaten by a cousin glowworm within 2-3 days. Anyway, we had a mini walking tour through 2 levels of the cave, when it was dark we could see one or two glow worms; until we got to the end of the second level-- we say the tentacles of the glowworms and then rounded the corner and boarded a boat which brought us to glowworm haven-- it looked like the night sky covered with stars-- but they were gooey glowworms emitting the light. No pictures were allowed. We exited the cave on the boat and at the last spot we could attempt to take a picture but the glowworms weren't bright enough to capture. It was pretty flipping cool. Glad matt agreed to spend the 52$ each to do it.

After the tour we hiked out to a lookout where matt spotted the tree that he Dave and Jason joked about-- it had branches like an oak tree but the leaves were that of a pine tree complete with pine cones. After the 10 minute hike back we ate our ham and cheese sandwiches we prepped in our hotel room and drove another 2 hours to mount raupehu, a dormant volcano with a ski hill. Drove up to the ski hill parked the car and hiked around for a bit. They even were making snow (which was melting at a quick rate) for a mini sledding hill. After our short hike we returned to the car and drove around a couple lakes on our way back to taupo. Returned to the motel, went down to Dixie browns for amazing calamari and a tequila like chicken along the water front. Stopped at the Irish pub on our way back to the motel and fell asleep by 930. Driving the forgotten highway tomorrow and working our way to Wellington. Car has to be back by 1/17 am and fly to Christchurch. Oh. We also decided against a campervan due to gas cost and how crabby someone who shall remain nameless gets if he doesn't get a good nights sleep.