Today was all about glow-worms!...oh and lots of driving.....an obligatory part of our trip to NZ since we are trying to cover so much ground in just 2 weeks.

We left the sunshine and warmth of Auckland and headed south towards Waitomo and the infamous glow worm caves. The drive took 3 hours or so but seemed less as we set the pace slow and took in some amazing scenery of rolling hills and farmland. As we neared Waitomo the sky became grey and we saw our first few spots of rain in NZ - lucky we were planning on going underground!

Entry to the glowworm cave was not cheap (£55 for the two of us for a 45minute tour of the cave and a look round the museum!) - I am starting to miss my lifetime NT membership and free entry to everything (thanks again Mum for the amazing wedding gift). Our tour started with a bit of history of how the cave was discovered in the 1800's by a western explorer who befriended a Mauri chief and they made a raft and floated into the caves on a river with candlelight. They were amazed to find themselves in a chamber glittering with tiny lights and it was not long before tourists were being taken into the caves even back in those days!

Our tour started on foot and we descended through the dimly lit limestone caves with fine views of stalactite and stalacmites. The caves were originally carved out by river water eroding the limestone, and make an ideal habitat for glowworm larvae as the environment is cool and damp and has free flowing water through it bringing with it pupae and larvae of flying insects. We learned why this helps the glow worms in their lifecycle. Most of their life is spent in larvae form before they form a chrysalyss (like a butterfly) and then emerge as a flying insect. The insect lives purely for a few days and its sole purpose is to reproduce -it doesn't even have a mouth so it dies after a couple of days of starvation! The larvae is what we refer to as a 'glowworm' - it lives on the roof of a cave chamber and feeds off flying insects that hatch from their larvae in the river water below. The glow worms have an ability to create light via bioluminesence - in simple terms a chemical reaction - and the newly hatched flying insects from the river water below instinctively fly towards what looks like the sky and stars - but in the caves it is masses of glow-worms! The glow worms have similarities to spiders in that they are able to make a form of web to catch their prey - but for glow worms they make 'lines' that hang closely together from the cave roof covered in thick sticky mucous droplets. We could see the glow worm lines on our tour when they were illuminated by torch light.

The second half of our tour involved stepping onto a small boat underground in pitch blackness and complete silence and taking a magical journey down the river beneath masses of tiny lights - they looked just like fairy lights strung from the cave roof. We then emerged from the caves further downstream into lush green woodland. Apparently the Waitomo caves have the highest quantity of glowworms in one location worldwide.

After a yummy hot chocolate and a quick whizz round the museum we saw an audio-visual display giving us more details on the caves and area. We then had a further 2.5 hour drive to our camp site for the night on the edge of the Tongariro National Park. En route the heavens opened and Scott did a fab job of driving through the mist (no views of the volcanoes for us!) Tomorrow we are hoping to walk the famous Tongariro Crossing - a part of the Northern Circuit- which found fame by forming the set for Lord of the Rings and Frodo's journey to Mordore! Fingers crossed for favourable weather so that we can attempt the trek.