A more mellow glowworm cave day with Avani

The glowworms' sticky threads capture flying insects.
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On Easter Sunday, we woke up early and hid eggs for Avani outside of our vacation cottage.  She had a great time finding them all.  Then, per tradition, I had my own easter egg hunt, which always ends in Sean having to help me with

"hot" and "cold" hints on the last really hard ones.  Lots of fun as usual.

The bright blue glow emanates from the glowworm's butt, a fact that Avani loved!

Creepy bones in the dark cave.
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After a great morning, we took another glowworm cave tour, this time a more mellow one called Spellbound since we wanted Avani to see the glowworms too.  We went to a small cave where we got to see glowworms up close in their little hammocks, waiting for flies to get caught in the sticky threads that extend from their lairs.  The bright blue glow that attracts flying insects is a mixture of a phosphorescent enzyme and poop and emanates from the glowworm's butt, a fact that Avani loved!  She was not as crazy about the 20 minute silent boat ride in complete darkness.  Still, she was pretty well behaved considering she couldn't move around and had to be quiet the entire time, and we were definitely able to appreciate the thousands of glowworms on the ceiling a few feet over our heads and on the walls of the cave.  It was really an unbelievable experience to see so many bright tiny lights all around and reflected in the water and have time to reflect on the beauty of it all in the silence.

Avani loved our cave helmets for about a minute.
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Then we walked over to a dry cave to look around.  The company we went with had built a boardwalk through the length of the cave and had installed some tiny lights along the way, so Avani was much happier in this cave.  We got to see some interesting cave formations - stalagmites/tites, columns, and flowstone.  And a bunch of bones.  We were expecting to see ancient moa (extinct giant flightless bird) bones, but were not expecting to see so many other bones scattered throughout the cave.  I guess animals in the pastures above fall through small holes into the cave below and die or they die and get washed into the cave during floods.  Which makes for a creepier experience in the darkness than we were expecting.  We loved it!