You can't visit New Zealand without visiting the glow worm caves. We visited the fairly small Kawiti cave on the north island. Glow worms look a little like maggots in regular light, but are bioluminescent in damp dark caves. Only a few populations exist in the world mainly in New Zealand and Australia. They eventually hatch into a two winged insect, but they lack a digestive system as an adult, so they die after a couple of days. This is the cave entrance.
You can't take pictures inside the cave, but I borrowed this picture from their website, which is pretty much what we saw.
We spent an afternoon in Napier. The city was almost completely destroyed in an earthquake in 1931. They rebuilt the city in what was then the most modern style, Art Decco. Today it is a nice tourist destination. We wandered the beachfront and city street and had a nice lunch there.
Near Lake Taupo we took a hike to Huka Falls, which was just spectacular. The Waikato River originates from Lake Taupo and just before Huka Falls it narrows from 100 meters across to 15 meters.
Eventually it makes its way to Hamilton, where there is a lovely river walk through down town.
The last stop on the North Island is Wellington. We had a lovely view of the harbor from our apartment.
We had a few hours before we boarded the ferry to the south island so we wandered into the Te Papa museum. It was a beautiful free museum celebrating Maori culture and well as New Zealand history.
Their featured display was the history of New Zealand's participation in the Battle of Gallipoli. It was pretty sobering recognizing the loss of life during that 8 month campaign.
One thing we saw in almost every small town we visited was a war memorial.
It makes you think twice about dropping bombs.
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