1 February 2014-
Happy First of February!!!!
Ready for your morning jog????? (me neither but I'm going to do it anyway!)
Whoops. Looks like the trail/road has washed away..
Fancy a jog on the beach? Hmmm…jogging on sand is harder than it looks!!!!
View of our campervans in the Westport campsite:
So…after doing a tiny bit of research we've found there are some caving tours in the area…where we can see GLOWORMS!!!! (yes, we saw them last year but they're awesome enough to see again!).
We found this cave rafting tour guide in Charleston. Cave + rafting = sounds like fun!
Time to suit up. The older kids are going with Mark, Ray and me on the underworld cave (also called Black Water….ooooo!!! Sounds creepy!) rafting tour. Beth is taking Henry and Ava on a walking cave and gloworm tour. The little ones aren't big enough to carry their own rafts.
Taking a short "train" ride out to the entrance of the cave:
Annika and Lily look excited and ready to go!
The wetsuit crowd heading across the bridge. Yep. Gotta haul your own rafts!
And here's where Beth and the kids went their separate way:
Aaaaa….The giant cave jaws are chomping down on us:
We crawled and squeezed through some pretty tight spaces:
At a couple different spots on the tour our guide had us turn off our head lamps. Oh. Wow.
There wasn't any light at all! I can't imagine what a person would do if you didn't come into these caves prepared. You'd start hearing things….and I have a feeling you'd go crazy after a while! It was so dark that once our eyes adjusted to the darkness we still couldn't see our hands that we waved in front of our faces!!! That is DARK.
The photo below shows what the glow worms look like with our head lamps on – they're not worms at all! Those thin threads are made of silk by the larvae and they light up to attract prey. Read more about it HERE.When you turn out the head lamps ….that's when the cave looks like it's lit up with thousands of stars!!!! (and no, we didn't get any photos of that!)
Ready to raft down the river? Here's our conga line!
(ready to dance??)
See those funky shaped paddle gloves we're wearing? We used those to help us paddle and (attempt to) steer.
So….FYI: getting out of those inner tubes is more challenging than I'd expected it would be! Oh, and that bridge in the background? That's the one we crossed at the beginning of this caving/rafting trip.
Oh, I love these two goofy girls!!!:
(Ray doesn't look quite as amused by the ordeal. LOL!)
Goofy photo of the entire cave rafting group (we split into two groups):
Woo Hoo!!! We had a lot of fun on this cave rafting trip.
Beth's photos:
Cool cave!
Dang! That is one GORGEOUS ceiling!!!
Whoa! So cool! The cave formations were just beautiful…and spiky. Loved seeing the gloworms. Too bad we didn't get any photos of them…(again)
Time to head down the road. There's something on the map marked as "Pancake Rocks". Hmmmm….pancakes. Sounds yummy. Should we stop and check them out? Wonder if they're edible???
Gorgeous coastline:
Mark …pointing at stuff. (giggle)
The Kiddos. Or Minions. Your choice. 🙂
Annika is pretty excited about the rock necklace she got at a rather odd jade shop next to the cave rafting entrance building. The guy running the place may or may not have been the most savory character in the world but he was kind to the three girls (and gave them stone necklaces free of charge. I did buy jade earrings from him.)
Me…doing my best Asian pose.
Interesting rock formations! Here's a link for more info on Pancake Rocks.
Cutie pie Ava:
Cool looking arch with the ocean tumbling in and out from under it:
Beth and Ray. Love you guys!
The kids….running ahead. What a suprise!
No pancakes here… huh.
Can you see why they're called Pancake Rocks? They're thin layers of limestone rocks that have eroded….to look like this:
So….where are the pancakes???
Dang it!!!
Now I'm hungry for pancakes.
We're off to Greymouth…see you there!