The entry to the main Glow Worm cave Judy

and I and the rest of our small tour visited.

The two adventurers, having donned their

miner’s caps with lights affixed, are ready to

proceed into the cave.

The young lady in the red shirt was from Oslo, Norway. Her boyfriend was from the United Kingdom. When I asked her if she had been

to Stavanger, where my cousin Maryan’s husband, Steffen, was from—she said, “No.”

That was the end of our conversation.

A view of the cave’s entry from inside the cave. As we got deeper and deeper in the cave, we used our miner’s cap lights. Sometimes, the

guide would have us extinguish all lighting to see how very dark it was.

We were only allowed to take a few photos and, due to the flash required, no Glow Worms can be seen. “Google” glow worms on the Internet

and you can see some good photos of them.

Once we were deep inside the cave, our guide directed us to get into a rubber dinghy for a ride on the underground

river.

Bob and Judy are ready for their underground, float-on-a-river, Glow

Worm adventure!

The flash blanks out any Glow Worm “glowing.” Actually a larvae, the animal spins sticky webs that hang down (look closely for threads coming from the cave’s roof).

Insects see the worms, investigate, are snared by the sticky threads—and are eaten. The Glow Worms, however, have to fend off millipedes: they eat the Glow

Worms.

Beside the growth of a yellowish stalactite or stalagmite, if you look closely at the upper right of the

photo, you can see some Glow Worm threads hanging

down.

Our guide, an Australian who left his country

many years ago to live in New Zealand,

explains some of the history of the cave.

Though blurry, this shot of our guide talking to our group in “natural light” shows the

eeriness of the cave. A trip like this is not for someone with claustrophobia.

These are the bones of an extinct “Moa Bird,” according to our guide. The bird probably wandered into the cave, got lost, and starved to death.

Our guide points out more cave features deep underground.

Here is a shot of an “air hole” at the top of the

cave—there were several of these that we

could see during our underground trip.

Near the end of the walk in the cave, the

guide showed us another outlet—as

trained cavers explore these caves more and more, they find things

like this.