Sorry for the super belated update! I suppose I'll start with the most major news of all: I'm moving back home early. I'll basically be back in San Diego by May. Shocker, right? I feel the same way. I would love to stay here because I love New Zealand, but the sad fact is that it is extremely expensive. Basically I've been working my butt off to pay rent, electricity, internet, etc. I haven't been doing much traveling, which was my main goal in coming here. So I figured if I'm not able to save any money AND I'm not traveling, what's the point? It really is so unfortunate that it didn't work out the way I had hoped, but I've decided that my last few weeks here will be spent traveling all over NZ.
I had a really nice night on Friday. I went out to dinner with Tess, Ed, and Mark. We went to an Italian restaurant called Gina's (Kari: remember going there??). The food and wine were great! And it was really nice getting to hang out with Mark! I never see him! (By the way Mark, if you read this.. I'm so excited for the fresh beef we'll be grilling!) After dinner we headed to a bar for a couple drinks. I think my new favorite is gin and tonic. It's not sweet and you can't taste the alcohol!
Anyway, the traveling began yesterday. We (me, Ed, and a couple friends) went to a city called Waitomo for a tour of the glow worm caves. You may be asking yourself, "What are glow worms??" And that's an awesome question. They are the most amazing, yet at the same time slightly disgusting, creature I have come across... and they only exist in NZ. We actually had two tours in two different caves and got a bit of an overview of them. The caves we were in were about 55m (180ft) underground. Glow worms live in dark, damp areas (usually in and around caves). And if you haven't already guessed, they GLOW! They almost look like stars when you look at the cave walls. Like I said, they're amazing, but disgusting at the same time because the thing that glows is their feces. Yes, feces. Glowing feces. Apparently when their excrement is exposed to oxygen it glows! That's called bioluminescence.
I wish this were my picture, but it's not because we weren't allowed to take photos in the main hub.
Anyway, as if glowing feces is not interesting enough, the glow worms release strands that hang down from their bodies and act as spider webs. The strands can be anywhere from a few centimeters to one meter long! They use the "fishing lines" to catch insects to eat. When they feel a vibration in one of their strands, they know that something got caught and they reel it in.. a process which takes 45 minutes!
The life span of the glow worm is about 11 months. The majority of that time is spent in the larva stage, which is when they glow. Eventually, the glow worm turns into a flying insect that looks like a giant mosquito. When they are "born" as an insect, they're born without a digestive tract or MOUTH!! Basically, they can't eat once they become insects. So naturally they reproduce quickly and then die a few days later from lack of food consumption. The female glow worm will lay about 100-200 eggs in clusters of 10-20. The reason for the clusters is that the first few glow worms to hatch will eat the other eggs to survive before releasing their fishing lines!! So interesting, right?
This was the best shot I could get of the strands with the guide shining a light on them (it was pitch black otherwise). You can actually see the glow worm in this picture too.. it's the long brown (horizontal) thing in the middle-ish of the picture.
Okay, enough about glow worms (for now). After our tours, we headed about an hour and half out of Waitomo to see the Marokopa Falls. I thought Kare Kare was amazing, but this waterfall was at least 10 times bigger! It was soooo beautiful that I actually gasped when I walked around the bend and saw it.
After this, we went to this place nearby that was supposed to have a natural bridge. We didn't really understand what that meant, but we checked it out anyway. It ended up being a cave that had collapsed in on itself leaving the outer edge intact. The bridge was inaccessible though as it was about 200ft up. It was like being in an outdoor cave because we were still able to see the sky on either side of the bridge, but it was so dark underneath it. As we were leaving and it was getting darker and darker, we noticed that there were glow worms on the cave walls!! The darker it got, the more we saw and it was amazing to see them from a few inches away! Our friend Manuel brought along his DSLR so we did experiments trying to capture the light of the glow worms. After about 45 minutes to an hour of taking low ISO, high exposure photos, we got a GREAT shot (10 minute exposure!!!). I'll have to get that picture from him and put it up here. My camera unfortunately isn't that great, but I did get a better shot of the strands and the glow worm itself.
So cool, huh?
Here are some random pictures from the trip:
NZ is very green.
Stopped by a farm and called an ostrich over for a photograph (not kidding.. I actually whistled and it came over from a couple hundred feet away).
It was a very friendly ostrich. I ended up feeding it some dry grass (hay?). It actually reached out and took it from me! Exciting! =)
Some funny art at Gina's.
I really like the top one!
Well, I hope you all enjoyed my update! We'll be traveling around the South Island within a week so I'll be sure to update more frequently.
xoxo
