First stop, Waitomo (Maori for Water Hole), home of some glow-worms. There were a couple of activities to choose from, but not being able to swim and generally disagreeing with water sports, I chose the option to take a gentle raft through some caves to see the glow worms.
Unfortunately, even with a thirty plus second exposure it was impossible to get some decent photos of the little glowing buggers. It was really impressive. The raft trip was in the dark, so as our eyes got more and more adjusted to the dark, the cave seemed really well lit, and it was kind of like having a load of fairy lights strung around the cave, and by a load I mean thousands!
So firstly the walk to the cave:
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| The cave |
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| Inside the cave |
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| Someone else's photo of the glow worms stolen from the internet |
So back on the bus, and we made our way to Uncle Boy's Lodge in Maketu, where we were introduced into a Maori family (there's about 40,000 of them now, as the tour has been stopping there for ten years).
We got officially introduced to the tribe (iwi), and they then did a little show. After this boys and girls seperated, girls learning a poi dance (like poi back home, soft balls on the end of material ropes), and we went off to learn the haka war dance (same one that the All Blacks do). That was really fun, I still have bruises on my thighs from slapping them so hard four days later. Really good to learn, needed a lot of energy, and it seemed much better than the poi dance which I think needs more than 45 mins practice to master!
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| The bus group after the poi and haka. There may have been multiple cameras... |
We had a chilled evening, and all slept in the main room in the photos above. It was very easy to fall asleep this night :)
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