I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this, but I thought that the Bay of Islands was a group of islands off the coast of the main islands of New Zealand. Nope. It’s about 230 km (143 miles) northwest of Auckland. On the other hand, the landscape is very pretty. We’ve left the verdant green of the tropical islands and entered the forest green of temperate zones. Add to that a 15-degree drop in temperature with a drop in humidity and I’m feeling much more comfortable walking around.

This is the first time our ship dropped anchor outside of a harbor’s breakwater. So, it was a 25-minute tender trip to get to the pier. There I jumped on the glowworm bus. That’s a sentence I never thought I’d type. A half-hour later we were entering the Kawiti Glowworm Caves.

But first, disappointment. We could not take pictures in the games. Our guide explained the local Maori consider this privately-owned care as sacred. I understand, as many churches have the same rule. However, I spent the previous two days learning how to use my cameras to take long-exposure darkness pictures. The concern is bright lights or even flashes could damage the glowworms. And to be honest, we never had the time or space for me to set up my tripod and do things correctly. If I was to do this I’d need to take an individual (not a bus) trip here and a make a personal appointment. To make up for it, here is a short video where a much more talented photographer went to a larger cave and took some great pictures.

Our group of thirty were given hand lamps and we single-file walked into the cave. Five minutes in we stopped for the guide to give us background information and we told to set out lamps to “low”. It was amazing as thousands to small blue-green dots of lights appeared on the walls and ceiling no more than 10 meters above us.

Seems mom-glowworm sticks the eggs on the wall or ceiling and the kids seldom move. They weave a hammock from their thread (like a spider web) and dangle “fishing lines” from the hammock that is sticky with a paralyzing liquid they also produce. Then their tail glows like a firefly and attracts small insects. Months pass until they pupate into a fly. Over the next few days they find the Mister or Misses glowworm fly of their dreams and start the life cycle over again. They need to do this quickly as their flying form has no digestive system, so they cannot eat.

It was a great time and I recommend everyone try this if you have chance. But I’d like to have tried to take my own pictures.

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With the highlight of our tour complete we visited the local town of Kawakawa, known for their… toilets? Yep. Our bus driver called them “funky toilets” by Friedensreich Hundertwasser. It was like Dr. Seuss designed bathrooms.

It was also a chance to browse thru a local convenience store. There was also a local bakery that made excellent meat pies. We are definitely in the first world again.

We were doing good on time, so our drive took the long was back to the pier and gave us a quick tour of the surrounding area. I did not know that kiwi fruit grew on vines like grapes! There were many bee hives making Manuka honey.

And that’s a good segue to talk about New Zealand’s biosecurity. They do not mess around. These placards were on every restaurant table on the ship.

I had a card delivered to my cabin with the text:

New Zealand has some of the world’s strictest biosecurity regulations and as part of these regulations, no food of any sort is allowed to be taken ashore… regulations prohibit the delivery of whole fruit to guest suites. Room Service will happily arrange sliced fruit for you as needed. Regulations also prohibit serving honey on the ship unless in individually portioned in an open ceramic dish.

So, yeah. It’s for real. And I get it, New Zealand is two islands far removed from the rest of the world. I lived in Hawaii for several years and they have similar rules.

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I head off on my four-night field trip to southern New Zealand tomorrow. However, I plan on bringing my laptop, so I should be able to continue posting. Stay tuned!