On Saturday we had an early morning drive to see the Glow Worms in the Waitomo caves. It was two hours from the Cafe and we had had a late farewell dinner with Phillippa and her family and we didn’t end up packing our gear until after 10 pm.
On the advice of many, we booked a “Black Water Rafting” cave tour. The only slot available was 8:30 am so we were on the road by 6. It was a classic “sleep fast” situation. We were very excited, especially since we knew little about the caves - only that we’d be floating on a tube and have the chance to see Glow Worms.
We donned our wetsuits, miner’s helmets, white rubber boots, picked a tube and began crawling in a cave. You’ll have to use your imagination, because photos are not allowed. Before too long we were good and wet, had jumped over two small water falls and were staring upwards at the amazing glow worms. These little critters phosphoresce so much that we could see our white boots in the cave. Amazingly, they looked like stars in the sky!
Cold and wet, but absolutely incredible.
The remainder of the day was dedicated to getting to Christchurch (with clean clothes). So we broke up the 2-hour drive to the airport with a short laundry stop, dropped the rental car and found a spot in the airport to catch our breath.
The Air New Zealand flight left on time, arrived early and we had our luggage within 10 minutes! We boarded the city bus at 7:55 and the helpful driver got us to our transfer point just as the rain started. By the time we got off the second bus and walked nearly a kilometre to to our Air BNB it was raining full on.
Gayle’s check of the forecast for Christchurch showed a rainy day in store for Sunday. We knew that we would have some time to kill between checking out and boarding the bus to our third Wwoof, so we opted to visit the free museum near the botanical gardens. We headed for the bus stop in the rain.
On arrival at the station, we checked our back packs and walked about a kilometre to the Museum in the pouring rain. We arrived fully drenched to find the museum closed.
Cold and wet, again. Not the Adventure we had planned, so we made up a new one.