Waitamo: Glow Worm Caves

Waitomo is full of amazing limestone caves and best of all these caves are full of glow worms and underground rivers-- making for amazing trips literally down under....

unfortunately it is nearly impossible to capture the beautiful glow worms on a digital camera... so you will just have imagine taking a trip down a subterranean river on an old wooden boat with ceiling aglow with little blue green stars shimmering above...

We did get some pretty awesome pictures of the limestone formations though...

a welcome from a lovely cave dweller

Stalactites/stalagmites grow about .005" per year.. so it takes a very long time for these delicate sculptures to become what we see today

a most beautiful ribbon-like stalactite

bumpy coral-esque

popcorn!

glow worm's setting out there web like bait for food

fossils found during excavation

joe astounded!

an amazing cathedral like room filled with stalactites & stalagmites

(in fact in one area of the cave they actually put on concerts because of the great sound effects... many groups from the Vienna Boys Choir to Kenny Rogers (??) have performed there [we werent allowed to take pictures of the cave])

Rotorua:: river rafting

We headed to the Kaituna River for some grade V river rafting.

The grade comes mainly from the 21' drop over Okere Falls (the highest commerical vertical rafting drop in the world!)

It was a short but wild trip!

One of the smaller warming up falls...

Joe and I are in the back row...

Heading over Okere Falls...

they are also an important site to the Maori people as the falls hide many caves that would shelter women and children during war

here we go!

and we thought we wouldnt get wet!

luckily we all stayed on (although we almost lost one woman!)

our guide lost his helmet.. we only lost our breath!

the man sitting in front of Joe was rather intense!!

our adrenaline pumped group and guide Nigel

(an interesting name for a dread-headed professional river rat)

Mt. Taranaki

On a luckily clear and sunny day Joe and I climbed the roughly 8,000' Mt. Taranaki.

A large volcano that dominates the skyline of the North Island, the view from a top is amazing beings how there is nothing else around!

The climb was very steep making for awesome shadows on the way up

Climbing up the scree was the most difficult part, it was literally 2 steps forward, 1 step back

Joe above the cloud line

after another hour or so of boulder climbing we finally ascended into the snow filled crater

a quick (and steep) 45 mins from the crater brings you to the top of the world!!

dont jump joe!!

the craziest part of the climb were these extreme unicyclists who carried their wheel(?) up to the top and then raced down with film crew in strategic areas...

pretty impressive although they seemed to fall more than they stayed on!

they showed us some pretty crazy tricks... but still "extreme unicycling????"