New Zealand Day 11 (10 April 2018)

Last night, we had an impressive wind and rain storm

Roar through the city. It woke us up so we shut the windows and battened down the hatches. After going back to sleep, we woke up this morning to a pretty sunset!

We left the apartment in Auckland around 9 a.m. and packed up the car in the warm rain. It was a new Tetris game, since the rental car is a different size than our previous one. However, we got it all to fit!  

When we stopped for gas, we found a wide array of pies, so we knew we needed to purchase some for lunch. Alex had heard that we needed to try the meat pies. I chose to order the chicken and basil pie. It was fresh and full of favor!

We all shared our pies, as well as muffins for lunch!  We stopped at the New Zealand temple in Hamilton.  It had been raining off and on for a few hours. When we finally got to the temple, I was really surprised to see there was no Angel Moroni atop the steeple. They are closing the temple down for renovations in July for awhile.  They had hymns playing when you got out of your car. It is always joyous to see the temple. 

We went in for a few minutes and talked with a couple

 Missionary from North Logan.  When we went outside of the building to go to the bathrooms, we saw an enormous pine tree (the missionary said it was a Norfolk Island Pine. I am pretty sure I’ve never seen such a large and unusual tree!

From there, we drove through the country on the way to the Waitomo Glowworm Caves!  The drive was absolutely stunning!

There were no photos or video of the Glowworms. 

However, I learned a lot of interesting facts about the glorworms. Like the fact that they are not actually worms!  They’re the larvae for a specific type of fly. They’re in the larvae phase for 9 months, but are only alive as a fly for FIVE DAYS. They also have no mouths, and can’t eat after they’re flies. The guide said 40% of their diet is a relation to themselves. They sent out long straw-like things to catch food and insects. It was so interesting to learn about! ...And the more that I learned, the more gross they sounded. So, I’m still going to pretend they’re like that toy from the 90s, where just their bum glowed!  Finally, they don’t feed the glowworms. Since there is a river running through the cave, the insects come in themselves. They don’t feed the glowworms either.  

We walked down into this pretty white limestone cavern. I don’t recall going into a cave that had such light stones everywhere!  They have dim lighting in most places. We also learned that two men discovered the cave in 1887, and they’ve been doing guided tours there since 1889. 

It felt like we were under hundreds of stars that were glowing a bluish green color. There were some throughout the caves, but over the water, there were hundreds of them!  They asked us not to talk while

we were on a small boat looking up at the glowworms. Our guide used a guide wire to navigate the boat in a small space through the water. We watched the glowworms for 10-15 minutes. It really was an incredible experience!  It kind of looked like something Disney would create, but they were all real!  Here is at the end of the tour, right after we saw the glowworms in action!

We 

Have I mentioned how stunning the caves are?  During the rainy season.sometimes the water from the river overflowed and they have to shit down the caves. It was pretty impressive!

We found a grocery store that sold some basics for us to eat in the morning.  It wasn’t fancy, but it did the trick. 

We finished this evening with Thai food. It was really good too. As we waited for the day to come to a close, I thought about some differences between the US and New Zealand  they have small towns you can drive through, but their main streets are full of stores with people moving in and out of them. It was another fun day!