Epic New Zealand Road Trip - Waitomo

Feb 13th
We left Queenstown at the wee hours in the morning to drive to the airport to return the car and took a flight to Aukland, where we met up with Satomi, Liên’s friend, who arrived the night before to join us for the rest of our New Zealand trip. We picked up another rental car and began our drive to Waitomo where the Waitomo Glow Worm Cave tour was awaiting us. Satomi was very tired from her travel, so she slept most of the way. We got to Waitomo early enough to have lunch before the tour. We finally found the elusive cheese board and shared it among the four of us for dessert. Yum. We were sold.

We got back to the tour place in time. Mark came to introduce himself as our tour guide. I had a hard time understanding his accent at first. He didn’t hold a grudge on me when I thought his name was Max or Mike or anything else that began with M except Mark. 
Before entering the cave, we donned a helmet with a headlamp mounted on it. We needed the light to guide us in the dark cave, but we turned it off to see the glow worms. We cruised the underground river with the light off on a boat pulled along a rope by Mark. It was awesome. 

Outside of the cave, Mark let the eels bite his hands and feet. Liên got down to touch the eels but she was afraid to let them bite her. The rest of us just took pictures.

We were treated to cookies and tea before walking to another cave where we didn’t need to wear headlamps because there were lights that could be turned on. The path to the cave was very pretty. We found fantails flying and jumping around. In the cave, we saw bones that were preserved by the cool and dry atmosphere. There were glow worms here, too. 

After the tour with the charismatic, albeit reluctant, tour guide, we continued our driving to Tongariro National Park where we stayed the night. We walked to one of the two restaurants available in the park and shared pizzas for dinner. We were happy to learn that there was a hot tub and we took advantage of it. 

Oh, I did get one decent picture of a fantail.