Waitomo and New Plymouth (New Zealand)

Two hours west of Rotorua is the village of Waitomo, famous for its limestone caves and glowworms! These bioluminescent beauties are the larval stage of a fungus gnat. They produce a mucous-y silk that hangs down in strands to catch their prey of small flying insects, which are attracted to the lights in the dark. You can view the caves on a relaxed walk-and-boat ride or you can go what I'm calling the EXXXTREME ENTOMOLOGY way. Donning thick wetsuits, neoprene socks, and very fetching white boots, we headed into the caves armed with headlamps and inner tubes! We had to do a practice jump beforehand – backwards off a platform into the freezing waters 3 meters below and landing on our inner tubes. An Irish couple didn't fare well in the practice run (Rich said you could've mistook the guy's cold shock for a heart attack), and they backed out completely once they saw the rushing waters in the first cave. Heavy rains in the area meant the water levels underground were very high. One section called “the limbo” was really more of a duck and dive job since there was less than 6 inches of head space between the water level and the rock above. Caving with the inner tube was actually a little cumbersome because if you weren't actually on it, the fast currents will drag it – and you – even more. The currents did make for some fun tubing, especially through the narrow passes where we joined up in a chain and turned off our headlamps to enjoy the starry sky-like glow of the worms. The ambiance was made complete by our group's rendition of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” in the echo-y caverns. We all managed the jumps and slides fine, and the guides challenged us to a game of “Find the Exit” by going dark and following only the trail of the glowworms above, floating solo until we all eventually emerged into the sunlit rainforest. Awesome!

New Plymouth, another 2.5 hours southwest of Waitomo, is usually not a place for tourists. A good-sized town, or “city” by New Zealand standards, it is mostly known as the home of the oil and gas industry. We were there, however, to visit friends. Oddly enough, one of Rich's friends from college  (a Brit) and one of my friends from grad school (an American) both just happened to have moved to this exact corner of New Zealand this year. We had a stroll along the waterfront (where volunteers were scanning the coast for missing and presumed drowned climbers) and peeked into the local museum. We tried several times to get a shot of the nearby mountain Taranaki (so perfectly cone-shaped, it's sometimes a movie double for Mt. Fuji) though the persistent rain and clouds were conspiring against us. But mostly in New Plymouth, we enjoyed the simple pleasures of life: an excellent tea and scones in a cafe, the ancient art of prowling for secondhand CD's in a record shop, and drinking good beers (Rich's friend unveiled a particularly fine stout he homebrewed).