Hairy Feet and Waitomo Glow-worm Caves

It is Sunday morning and the alarm goes off early, we want to be in Piopio in time because there are only tours at Hairy Feet twice a day. The first one is at 10 am and that’s the one we want to go on. We did not make reservations for it and we’ll just see if they can have us. It isn’t in Piopio but another 15 km outside it. Never mind, not a lot of traffic on the road, a bit of drizzle but not to much. When we get there, we see only one car and we laugh at each other saying, that must be the guide’s car. As it turn out, it is. We are the only ones on the tour today, so we have a private tour. First we take some pictures with Gandalf’s sword and staff, Thorin’s sword and the staff of Radegast. We have a PowerPoint slideshow how it all started and then we hop in a little bus. Our adorable guide and host Suzie brings us to the beginning of the tour. It is their farm and Suzie has brought pictures which shows us how the scenes looked like and some off-scene photo’s as well. We take our own pics trying to look like the scenes. Suzie tells about the real fences they used in the movie and all the artificial stuff. About a orchard that was built there but doesn’t really exists. How they took footage for the movie with a big chopper that had a camera at the front. Acting is a lot of hard work, being in make-up at 4 am, staying in your clothes and make-up for the whole day, sweat guttering down behind the masks and try to look the same over and over again. She also tells us about the land and the limestone rocks and also about the plants and trees growing on their land. It was a really great tour and we enjoyed it very much.
We pick up the coupon for the Caves and go to the Caves. We are on the 2.15 pm tour. A walk through the caves and a few minutes in a boat to see the glow-worms. First our guide shows us the caves and tells a lot about them, how they were formed. We see a stalactite that has the shape of an elephant and we see dreadlocks like Bob Marley’s. glow-worms only exists in New Zealand and on Tasmania, in other parts of the world they call it glow-worms but they are actually fireflies. And then glow-worms aren’t worms at all, they are larvae of a two-winged insect. They eat flies and other insects, to catch them they make dreads like spiders do, hanging down from the sealing. We see the dreads and the next thing is the boat. We have to be very quit and make no light. The glow-worms must not be disturbed, so i'm sorry but no photo's of this part. We get in the boat and our guide pulls us through the cave by a thick rope. Our eyes are used to the dark now and we see thousands of glow-worms, the starry night is nothing compared to this. It is only a few minutes and by the time we get out, the daylight hurts our eyes.
This day was certainly worth staying for.