Glowing Worms

After Rotorua, we were aiming to do some black water rafting in the caves, complete with rappelling down and jumping into underground waterfalls, in search of glow-in-the-dark worms.  Or so, that's what the brochures promised.

We missed the small print "If your children are 12 years old or weigh as much as a 12 year old."  

We stared longingly at the adventure spots (or maybe just I did) on the way to our much more tame, but still enchanting cave tour.  The photos they sent us do the tour more justice than my descriptions.  The glowworms were very cool.  I thought they were so magical until the guide told us that technically, they are maggots.  I much prefer the glowworm description.

It felt a little bit like one of the old rides at Disneyland - the Peter Pan ride or Alice in Wonderland, old world magic versus new world adrenaline.

We also went into other limestone caves and were 20+ meters underground.  I don't know what that is in feet, but it was deep.  The guide described the topography of the area, a fault line with lots of limestone, as "swiss cheese," and riddled with caves all over.  The formations were estimated to be ten million years old.  How is that even possible?  There is something so surreal about being that far underground, witness to something unfathomably old.

Off to the Dairy Farm.