It's rare for me to post 2 blog entries in one day but today is an exception! I finally managed to do something I've wanted to since reading marks blogs 3 years ago. Waitomo (wai meaning water, tomo meaning cave) is home to just that - underground caves which you can drift through on rubber rings in the water. Amazing! I did the 'labyrinth' pass which is a 3 hour trip through the caves. Although pitch black and a teensy bit claustrophobic it was so worth it! Most of the 3 hours is spent climbing through the caves and doing backwards jumps off of waterfalls (eek) but the highlight has to be a two minute glide through a pitch black tunnel gazing up at the hundreds of glowworms lit up above you. Whilst down in the caves, we learnt about how glowworms glow and also their life process. A chemical reaction between the oxygen in the air and the chemicals given off the glowworm cause the light, called bioluminescence. They control the light by adjusting the amount of oxygen they allow in to their light organ - clever eh? Their life story is slightly more interesting..... The females lay hundreds of eggs. The first one to hatch eats the rest of the eggs, giving the glowworm the energy it needs to glow. Once it matures, it evolves in to a fly with no mouth, so they cannot eat. It's in this time they must reproduce like crazy before dying a couple of days later. So in simple terms, they're born, eat a load, glow a bit, then shag 'emselves to death. Hard life isn't it!!

We finished the trip with some well deserved tommy soup and a look at the lovely wetsuit pictures - not so flattering! Wish we'd only had photos of our pile up in the cave due to the really strong current which was pretty entertaining! Pretty glad to be back in the warm now though. I'm pretty exhausted so I'm going to have a good sleep catch up before yet another early start tomorrow. Night! Amy x