Those Sparkling New Zealanders

The glow worms were not the only biological marvel on our tour of the Spellbound Glowworm Cave, about an hour’s drive from Cambridge.

The other one was our eyes and how swiftly and completely they adapted to the darkness. At first the glow worms’ light had seemed like tiny green pinpoints in the cave’s ceiling, hardly worthy of that impressive term “bioluminescence”. Yet after 20 to 25 minutes of walking through the darkness and sitting quietly in the boat, those modest pinpricks seemed to swell into globes, each one casting a circle of light from its source. As I gazed at them, I became aware that I was also able to see all the other people on the tour, their helmets and faces having magically emerged from the earlier darkness. See this picture for a better indication of how luminous the glow worms seemed by this stage.

Our tour guide, Scoober, had told us this would happen if we left our phones alone and surrendered ourselves to the natural world. I was wrong to doubt him.

I’m beginning to think that New Zealanders have their own kind of bioluminescence, so this is a good time to add to my series below (see Part 1 in this earlier post).

Love from Rosi 🖤🤍

Likeable Proclivities of Kiwis (Part 2)

• The New Zealanders were the first to give women the vote.
• They have a wonderful sense of humour and can laugh at themselves.

• They make up words like “trundler” to denote supermarket trolleys. So in NZ it would be possible to hear the sentence: “The old woman trundled past with her trundler, hoping that she had bought enough food for the grandchildren currently tucked up in trundle-beds at home.”

• They provide plentiful, not overly expensive food, and it’s delicious. There are cafés and bakeries everywhere. The sweet offerings stand out: date scones, ginger slices, jam rolls, caramel brownies, hedgehog, lolly log, passionfruit custard squares, eclairs…

Extra Details:

Tour: Spellbound Glowworm Tour
Accommodation: Hidden Lake Hotel and Apartments, Cambridge