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Waking up in the van today started like any other-I arose first-desperate for the loo and Anna and Pea squeaked and snuffled for another half an hour inside their sleeping bags. We had dumped the van in the middle of the night after a very stressful drive practically outside someones house,and awoke to find the occupier doing a spot of gardening as I rolled up the blinds to welcome some sun into the van!!!
We had taken a wrong turning somewhere the night before and ended up on a 'state-highway'-I don't think so!It was a road from hell-all bumpy and deserted with lots of loose stones.Anna scared herself into thinking a naked psycho with a balaclaver covered in blood,wielding a chainsaw was going to burst into the road and kill us all.Calm, as ever (and never moody), I took tight hold of the wheel and guided us back,after an hour and a half onto the same road and we camped for the night.Very stressful.
Next morning, we were heading to Waitomo to see the glow-worm caves yey!(Waitomo means 'Water entering a hole in the ground')We had been looking forward to this part of the trip.We went into town
to try and look for some public showers-upon not finding any,we headed into town and bought chocolate and pies instead.Well, if we were going to be stinky unwashed travellers,we may as well be chubby well-fed ones.After our snacks,we set off for the caves which only took another hour.
We arrived at the caves and bought an hours tour which took you round the caves and on a small boat into the main cave full of sparkly illuminous glow-worms!Right-get ready for the interesting facts....
About 30million years ago, when Waitomo lay beneath the see, the remains of millions of sea-creatures settled on the sea-bed and formed the limestone which is what the caves are made of-made up mostly of pure fossils and Calcium Carbonate.The cave was full of stalactites and stalagmites which had formed over millions of years and hung above us,dripping and shiny-Pea's hood went up as soon as we entered the caves and was staying firmly on,with her mouth closed as so no worms could whizz in.Our tour guide was very funny and talkative, and flashed his torch on various shapes that the rock had formed,such as a Kiwi,the back of Bob Marley's head, and the side
view of an elephant-a little imagination was needed but it was very interesting! It takes about 100 years to form one cubic cetermetre of Stalactite as the water drips down the initial 'straw' (because it starts out hollow) and remnants of limestone in the drips form the cone shaped natural beauty!!
We wandered round the caves and came to the boat,which couldn't do the whole trip as the river had flooded.We clambered onto the boat in pitch black and our guide pushed us off the side.We floated down the river and round the cormer, and looked up to see the whole roof of the cave was covered in glowworms!They lit up the ceiling like tiny illumionous blue lightbulbs (Pea's mouth was still shut) and was so nice to see.The glowworm is spider-like,light producing larva and is a species unique to New Zealand and only lives 11 months!There was one tiny flashing light in the middle of the natural wormy ligh display,and the fgirls egged me on to ask what it was-maybe some sort of firefly??or rare glow species???no,was the answer from the guide,it was an electronic temperature detector....I'm glad I asked.The caves were millions of years old and had
been discovered about 120years ago by local Maori people.One of the main and larger caves (Cathedral) was sometimes used for choirs and weddings because of the natural resonance and abrorbtion of sound from the limstone-only downside is you couldn't take pictures!After a quick look around the gift shop,we set off again in Colin the camper in the direction of New Plymouth on the west coast where we were meeting an old friend of mine from school called phil.We were desperste for showers and hoped we'ed find some before we met him!
The journey wasn't long, and we amused ourselves with a new found game called 'your-top-four',which involved us each describing our top four things.It was salad ingerdients and roast dinner vegetables last night, now it was time for chocolate bars and decided there were to many to choose only 4!!!!!Oh how we amuse ourselves...maybe tonight it will be,oh I don't know...top 4 colours of toilet roll?or maybe...top 4 paintbrush-bristle-density!!!!Anyway,we arrived in New Plymouth and found a swimming centre that we could have showers in and decided that we would go swimming in the morning for abit of exercise.After showers,Phil came to meet us and it was lovely to see
him!!!!He sat in Chez Colin for abit,surrounded by pants and mine and Anna's various carrier bags of odd socks and crisps and then he took us out into the centre of town,which was pretty dead but we found a nice place to have a drink.A few grumbling tummies took us in the direction of the 'eating in 'area and lovely Phil bought us all drinks while Anna and Pea took advantage of the snack menu,choosing fish bites and chips that were gone in about 3.4 seconds.I caught up with Phil,talking about a few of the old times and laughing at how silly we were at school, than he bought us all a 'special' hot chocolate night-cap that had baileys in, and we all thought it was the best hot chocolate we had had in a long time!We looked like a table full of pensioners!They went down very well. then Phill drove us back tp the van where we had cheekily dumped in the swimming pool carpark,so we could bail out in the morning and straight into the pool!!!
Very tired and worn out form the driving and the excitment of the hot chocolate and new found game,which I'm sure will be on channel 4 and hosted by Noel Edmonds very soon,we drearily unfolded the beds for our last night sleeping in Colin the Campervan!!!!Too tired to care,we fell asleep very quickly and fairly warm for a change!!!
Beano x x x
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