Waitomo Caves and the - ahem - Glow Worms

2012-01-19

Glow worms. What are they? As a child I remember the glow worm with the green fabric body, the hard plastic head and when you squeezed the flashlight inside the head would glow. Cute right? Nope. They aren't cute. And they don't have cute cheeks and smile.

Waitomo Caves are a couple of hours from Taupo, so we were on our way after breakfast. The caves are a huge tourist attraction with many different tours including walking, boat, climbing and what we did, the glow worm tour via innter tube.

We opted to go with Black Water Rafting for our 3 hour tour. We got all suited up in our sexy, smelly and wet suits for the very chilly plunge into the cave water.

We were driven down to the cave entrance. It was a little stream and a dark hole. I still wonder who was te first one to decide to go down there!

We had tubes with us that we carried into the small chasm. Right away we had to lie flat on our tubes in the freezing water and pull ourselves under a rock with only a couple of inches above our head. Not for the claustrophobic!

Once inside we walked through the water, floated through the water and sometimes made a long chain and we all moved down together. We had headlamps on but at times we would shut them off to enjoy the darkness... And the glow worms. The last stage was a completely pitch black "game" where we had to float out to the exit without any lights on. The whole experience was amazing... And so much fun.

Now the glow worms. I will try to recount what a glow worm is... Sorry if I get anything wrong but Wikipedia is down in protest.

Once we all turned off our headlamps, green little LED type lights would appear on the ceiling of the cave. Sort of like stars in the milky way. So they glowed. And they were green.

Now... The good stuff. Glow worms are actually maggots... Larva of a fly. They are actually long black wormy things and the glowing green is the chemical reaction happening in their stomach. The mother fly lays lots of eggs and sticks them to the ceiling. The larva stay there for 9 weeks. They let down strands of sticky silk that capture bugs that fly by in the cave so that they have something to eat. They need to eat about every three days or they will starve.

After they are done as a larva they then cocoon and turn into a fly after some time (I can't remember). They then fly away, find a mate and lay eggs. The female kills the male fly after mating, which takes up to 48 hours. The female lays her eggs all together and then she dies after 4 days of being a fly. I mentioned that she lays all her eggs together, it isn't for convenience. She knows the larva will need food and the larva that turn into flys first will then get caught and feed the larva that are still there. So essentially the siblings eat each other! Doesn't sound to glamorous anymore does it? Oh well, they are still pretty little buggers in the cave... So if you have the opportunity go to a glow worm cave and enjoy the maggots!

Click here to view the pictures in Flickr. We weren't allowed cameras so these are pictures they took of us. Some of them are stock photos they included on the disc, but it shows what we saw nicely.