January 2nd – Gloworms
Ventured into town to do some food shopping and to see the national bird at the Kiwi House. It was bigger than expected but good to see. The site also had loads of ducks, birds and lizards. Funny how feeding the ducks is still fun – even when the kids are teenagers, they fed out of O’s hand and there were little chicks to coo over too. Thanks to Lonely Planet on the way back we discovered we were just in time for the show at The Shearing Shed – just up the road from the campsite. Only – it’s not sheep – it was Angora rabbits that get the haircut. This poor fluffy white rabbit was put on something which resembled a toture rack and was shaved with the old sheep shearing gear. It’s not painful to the rabbit, just really humiliating in front of a crowd! The amount of wool (fur?) that came off was amazing, they need a shave every 3 months. Needless to say we could not be tempted by the range of Possum and Angora goodies in the shop afterwards.
The gloworm cave here is world famous and it’s reputation is well deserved. We took a late afternoon tour (after all the tour groups have gone) and walked through limestone caves with stalactites and stalagmites and were taken by boat through the largest section of the gloworm colony. No photos are allowed so I will try and describe it although no words could ever really give it it’s due. The gloworms are like little tiny bulbs on the ceiling, greeny blue in colour and there were thousands of them all hanging from the roof. As the ceiling had stalactites and was very even it looked like a Christmas grotto with thousands and thousands of tiny lights. I can’t even imagine what the Moari must have thought coming across the cave centuries ago – apparently they were in awe of the cave and rarely ventured in. You can understand why. There have also been concerts in the limestone part of the cave with Barbara Streisand, Sting, Dame Kiri etc due to the acoustics. I was singing “wake me up before you glo-glo” to O but she was not that impressed………………
Tags: New Zealand, Travel
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