Leaving Wellington
Sadly, we
had to say our goodbyes on Sunday and start making our way north back to
Auckland for our flight out on Tuesday.
We drove up to New Plymouth, which is on the west coast of the North Island. The scenery was beautiful, the roads winding and hilly and lots of sheep and beef farms.
New Plymouth to Auckland (23-24th)
I so wish
that we had an extra week to enjoy the North Island. There is so much to see and we just did not
have the time to do it justice.
The first
thing on our agenda was to view Mount Taranaki near New Plymouth. Mt. Taranaki is a dormant volcano and
dominates the landscape. It’s the epitome of a volcanic mountain! There are
many hiking trails you can enjoy in the park by the mountain. The best is an all day hike to the top for a
phenomenal view, if there are no clouds to obscure your view. Unfortunately, our trip was drive close, take
pics, say we were there and then leave.
Next trip. But no clouds were obscuring
the peak so we were really happy.
Our next
stop was to find a black beach. The west
coast is known for their black sand beaches and we really wanted to experience
one. Fortunately, the narrow windy road
that we had to take to get to the glow worm caves (next stop), followed the
coastline, so when we saw a sign pointing to a beach we drove right in. It was beautiful and unique. I have never seen any beach like that before.
On to the
Waitoma glow worm caves. The glow worms
were located deep in the Waitomo cave system, a limestone cave area. People come from all over to view the glow
worm caves. You can find glow worms all
over New Zealand, but the attraction here is the incredibly high concentration
of glow worms in one place. The glow worms are really the larval stage of a fly
(egg-larva-pupa-adult) that use bioluminescence to attract prey. Our guide compared them more to the
bioluminescence of zooplankton in the ocean than to fireflies. I have to research this to see if it’s
true. EDIT: I researched the glow worm, and it is indeed similar to our fireflies. And it is not their feces that glows, there is a sac in their body where the chemical reaction takes place that produces the glow. They secrete a sticky filament
that hangs down from their body and their body (actually feces) glows and
insects are attracted to the bright light and get ensnared in the filament and
the larva can then consume them. The
cave we boated through had an astronomic number of glow worms. I was amazed.
Unfortunately part of the tour was that no pictures could be taken, so
you have to take my word for it. Our
guide was very knowledgeable about both the caves we were walking through and
the glow worms. Well worth the visit.
Also, I discovered that we have glowworms in America. There is a cave system in Alabama where you can find them.
After the
glow worms, we were off to Auckland and getting ready to head for home on the
24th. Boo-hoo.
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