Caves & culture

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Thursday I went caving on the Haggas Honking Holes adventure! Abseiling down waterfalls, crawling through holes & climbing up limstone walls. It was brilliant but so very tiring! Once we got out of the caves the walk back up the hill to the sheds nearly finished me off! There were loads of glow worms in the caves (Arachnocampa luminosa) - for those fans of nature documentaries these are the ones that have a sticky silk strand hanging down under them to catch flies. The whole experience was amazing! There are photos taken by the guides but I don’t have a CD drive to get them onto the computer...

We then stopped briefly to watch an angora rabbit being shaved for it’s fur! Nearly bought some angora/merino blend yarn but decided I didn’t want to carry it all around New Zealand.

We then headed to Uncle Boy’s cultural retreat for the evening where we had a traditional Maori greeting, aka challange which Justin (as oldest our chief of the ‘Stray Tribe’!) met with a straight face & we got accepted into their family tribe. We got fed a great meal & given a wonderful show of traditional Maroi song & dance. Then the boys from the bus learnt the Haka (the one the All Blacks do!) & us girls learnt a simple poi dance which we then had to show to each other with much hilarity! We all slept in a traditional fashion on the floor of the main hall.

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Photos

It was wet in those caves!
This was after crawling through a hole half filled with rushing water!

Rainbow!
Saw many many of these!