Tuesday, February 2, 2010

A Grotto-ing Experience

Hooroo! Today was our last port, Auckland. We had a long bus ride to visit the glow worm grotto, a unique limestone tunnel of stalactites and stalagmites that are home to a worm that glows. These worms hatch after a few days, spend nine months as a worm, a few days in a cocoon, and then 5 days as a flying insect. Since they’re in a dark tunnel, they have a single thread web that hangs down to catch insects to feed on, and they glow to attract insects to them. We took a boat through the tunnel, and it looks just like millions of stars glowing in a pitch black sky, pretty neat. When you shine a light on them, you can see all of the single thread webs hanging down- that is a bit trippy. Once the glow worms graduate to flying insects, they apparently only live for 5 days because their only purpose is to reproduce, so they don’t even have mouths. Disturbing… Afterward, we had the best meal I’ve had yet on this trip. It was a cruise-sponsored tour, which meant we had 50 people on it; however, the lunch spot was out of a local’s home who had set it up specifically for cruise tours. They had their home decorated in an old English style, and I think it is one of the most beautiful homes I’ve ever seen. The garden area was spectacular, and that’s where they had a dozen big tables set up for lunch. It was a simple meal, but it tasted amazing; roast lamb, meatloaf, potatoes and tomatoes and wine carafes with fresh berries and ice cream for dessert. Sounds simple, but it was drool-worthy. All the ducks and cows were there to watch us eat lunch as they have a large farm as well. Pretty cool experience compared to the normal restaurant scene.

So now we’re back on the ship for the next three days before we arrive back in Melbourne and fly up to Sydney. Our dinner partners unfortunately got off on Auckland not to return, so it is now my father and I alone for dinner. We have dinner in the dining room each night, where you are assigned a table and sit with the same people each night. It’s a good way to build relationships with other people on the ship, some sort of consistency. In the past, we’ve been sat at tables of 6 or 8 where you have plenty of people to talk to each night. This trip, we had a table of 4, and we were sat with two women. One of the women is an independent cruise agent who books them for people and will act as a tour guide if needed, so she came on this cruise as a ‘familiarization cruise’ and brought her friend along with. When we had dinner the first night, I thought they were pleasant enough, but was not happy because I felt our conversations would dry up quickly and it would be awful to be stuck together just the 4 of us day in and day out. Turns out our conversations only got better and better, we loved their company and actually looked forward to dinners with them, and we were really sad to see them getting off the ship early since they worked in Auckland and didn’t want to have to pay to fly back from Sydney. Tonight it was just my dad and I, and although we had good conversations, we see each other all day and enjoyed having other people to talk to =P Our two waiters are very entertaining though; the head waiter is Thai and has made my dad very happy by bringing him Nam-pla, fish sauce. The other waiter is Filipino, he’s been working on the ships for much less time and seems more nervous, but he finally seems comfortable as he’s joking and singing to us during dinners now. He has two children; he works for 7 months and then gets a 3 month break, so he goes a long time without seeing them. That seems very difficult, I feel for some of the workers here; it’s good money for them, but it’s difficult to leave everything behind for long periods of time.

The ship is rocking pretty hard tonight for some reason… always an adventure when you’re trying to walk down halls and everyone is pinballing off of each other. Then, you finally get your sea legs and can account for the constant rocking so that you’re not swaying down the halls, and you get off the ship and start zigzagging down the street trying to account for rocking that is no longer occurring. I’ve also been trying to work out on each of our at-sea days, which is an experience in itself to be running on a treadmill while watching the Australian Open on individual TVs with the ocean spanning in front of you through the huge windows the machines are all set up in front of. It is much harder to account for rocking while running on a treadmill, so it is an adventure to try to keep from falling off the sides of the machines constantly and maintain speed.

Here’s to hoping the tipping and turning doesn’t get to my stomach tonight, or my father’s. And although if everyone else on the ship were sick, it would mean less people at activities tomorrow, I don’t think I could wish seasickness upon anyone…not a fun way to spend a holiday!

I leave you with the glow worm song that our driver sang to us following our grotto experience:


I wish a I were a glow worm
Because a glow worm’s never glum.
How can you be unhappy
When the sun’s shining from your bum?!

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