Uncle Boy

Today was Waitomo, which are miles of underground caves covered in stalagmites, stalactites, glow-worms and underground rivers. Of all the things you could do down there, we decided to do the Haggis Honking Holes, which in short means “underground abseiling”. Climbing on your knees through the tiny caves and swimming through the over-flooded parts was nothing compared to leaping backwards down a 20m tall underground waterfall where the only light is coming from the small torch attached to your head.

Fact of the day:

Glow worms (a type of maggot) glow because of their faeces. They don’t actually have a poo hole, so instead of excreting it they burn it inside them, thus causing the glow. This glow attracts other animals into the glow worm’s nets and like a spider they can then eat their prey.

Once these maggots eventually become adult their mouth closes up preventing them from eating any more. Without the ability to eat, instead they spend the whole day mating until they finally die of hunger. By this time the glow worms should have laid a large number of eggs. Quite differently to many other species, the first child worms to hatch will actually quickly eat their un-hatched siblings in order to give them enough sustenance to grow up.

This evening was spent at the residence of a local Maori (the indigenous people of NZ) who went by the name Uncle Boy. Here a local dance group from the town came in to teach us how to do the Haka, which you may well know as the intimidating dance the All-Blacks perform before a rugby game.