There is this bug that glows in the dark and lives in caves.  They call them glow worms, but they aren’t worms.  I booked an all day tour to go see the glow worms.  It was a big bus tour and that just made the whole day slightly disappointing, but I still got to see glow worms and sheep!  It was a 13-hour tour and there wasn’t one interesting person on the bus except the bus driver, Rachael.  I’ve attached a video.  Getting on the bus was a bit stressful.  I arrived at the bus station where there were a bunch of tour buses and people, but none of the buses had the name of the tour company I thought I booked with.  Later I found out they are all the same company with different names.  The lady in the office said I needed to check in with the lady by the buses.  There was a sea of confused tourists and somewhere in the middle of that sea was a lady with a shopping cart of fruit and a list of names.  She gave me some fruit, gave me a sticker and told me which bus to get on.  Ah, the sticker people tracking system.  So simple and yet quite effective.  I’m a green sticker for the day.

It was a 3-hour drive to the cave.  Rachael told us all sorts of information about New Zealand along the way.  I was actually a little bummed that I couldn’t stay awake for all of it.  I think she talked the whole 3 hours.  The cave tour involved a lot of information on how they found the cave, a little information on the glow worms and a quick, but beautiful boat ride through the cave.  No one is allowed to take photos so the one I posted is from the internet.  All the Japanese (half the bus) were late so we got to the farm late.  I assume their translator did a bad job of telling them when to be back.

The Agrodome farm was fun though.  First they showed us how to sheer a sheep.  I’m not sure how I feel about this.  Then they showed us how a dog herds sheep.  I don’t think I liked this part. It’s one thing to herd sheep because you need to, but another thing to stress them into running around a course because 53 tourists want to watch.  I did kinda like the part where one of the sheep tried to be all tough and face off with the dog and stamp its foot in protest.  “Fuck you, we did this yesterday and I don’t like you”.  Then we went on a trailer pulled by a tractor around the farm.  We saw at least 7 different types of cows, pigs, turkeys, pukekos, goats, deer, sheep, and alpacas.  Then we got to feed the sheep.  The tractor stopped and sheep came from everywhere.  It was a fantastic mess of sheep and squealing Japanese.  I could have watched that for hours.  I got to pet and feed sheep.  I was a happy 6-year-old!

The last stop was the Te Puia.  We were here in the 18-day tour, but I chose not to go.  It’s a thermal park / cultural center.  First off was a Maori concert.  It was similar to the dinner we had gone to on the tour, but just the singing and dancing part.  Then we had a tour of the thermal park.  I had my fill of people touching me and crowding me so I skipped out of the tour and walked around on my own.  There is a geyser there.  It didn’t go off while I was there.  I wish I had had more time to walk through the park.  A long ride back to Auckland and Rachael decided to not talk so people could sleep.  I was ready to stay awake and take in all the knowledge Rachael had to share.  Darn, I did that wrong.

Today, I’m going to take it easy, get some work done.  Tomorrow I get on a plane to go back to the US.  It doesn’t seem real.

Interesting facts:

Glow worms are not worms, but the larvae of a type of fly.

Glow worms glow so that insects will think that is the way out of the tunnel and then get caught in their feeding lines.

The first glow worms to hatch eat the others.

A sheep shearer makes $2 per sheep

2 dogs can handle 800-1000 sheep.

The sheep get sheared every 6 months.

Lanolin is sheep oil – their wool is oily – maybe not news to you, but it was to me.

There are Angora Goats – again, maybe you knew this, but I always thought it was a type of rabbit.  There are angora rabbits too.  Learning new things.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore