Glowworm: no ass, no mouth?

Weekend trip!
We had to work on our plan not to stay home all weekends. So we (Alex, Justin, Lauren and me plus Nadja and Daniel from Germany) went to see the Waitomo caves yesterday.

It was just about an hour drive there, which was very nice. I took some pictures with the SLR, just before the battery was empty. Should have charged it I guess. Fortunately, I had the small Sony camera with me.

Well, anyways. We finally arrived there and decided to go for the glowworm guided tour right away. We got a family ticket (don't ask me why ;-)) and went with Kaka Ahaka, our guide (name invented. too hard to remember his real name).

I really enjoyed the tour. It reminded me of being a tourist guide myself (on the Hohenwerfen Fortress). But this guide did a better job than I did back then, he even sang a Maori song in the cave cathedral. And I laughed my ass off when he was telling us the story about the life stages of a glowworm. He said that the larvas don't have asses, which leaves just two options:

• explode
• burning out their excrements and glow
  

Most of them go for the second option I guess..
And then, when they finally manage to be fully developed flies, guess what: They don't have a mouth! Which leaves them only one option:

• be dead in 3 days

The tour ended with a boat trip through the glowworm cave, which looks like an indoor starry sky. I like starry skies though ;-)

Back in the sun we were ready to walk around the area. There are really nice hiking trails, and we explored at least some of them (see pictures). After an hour or so we passed a car park, and 4 of us decided to go back and get something to eat. Alex and me wanted to see more and went on walking. And I think it was worth it. I liked walking, I liked the nature, the jungle feeling, the natural tunnels and caves, the river.

In the evening we had Mexican fiesta, which was basically us eating heaps of food. AWESOME!!