Apart from mangrove, there are actually a lot of green hills and sheep in New Zealand. Most of the landscape in North island looks like that, also in the Waitomo area:
The interesting part with this area is that it has limestone as bedrock .. and numerous caves! There is a totally different world below the green ..
Rivers flow into it .. and out of it.
And it is one of the most famous tourist attractions in New Zealand. Perhaps mostly because of the glow-worms living in those caves. On top of different glow-worm watching trips you can do whatever else tours from rafting on a tube in those underground rivers to abseiling and climbing through the caves.
And here are some glow-worms (
Arachnocampa luminosa)
Difficult to photograph (at least without tripod) but really amazing. Imagine being in the total darkness of a cave having only a headlight for illumination. Then you turn the light of and stand in total darkness. Well, not total .. it's like there were thousands of small greenish stars in the sky .. actually on the roof of the cave. When your eyes start to adjust to the darkness you can even see a bit of what is around you in the cave in this greenish light.
The glow-worms are actually no worms but larvae of a fly. They produce light to lure insects into the sticky traps they have build - a bit like spider webs. When an insect gets caught into them, the glow-worm eats it for dinner.
Something else found in those caves are wetas, cave crickets (and they are REALLY large!):
When seeing them on the wall above you, you feel just like ---iiiiiik! However, those guys don't eat persons but just spend their days in the cool and dark caves. They will climb up into the rainforest during night time and will feed there (on vegetation, I guess).
Interesting also to find fossils in those caves. Here are some bones of a extinct giant flightless bird, a moa (nicely prepared for tourist to see it in this show cave):
Beautiful pockets of rainforest outside of the cave:
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