I can handle the reversal of the car – it’s not a total mirror image, as the pedals are in the same place. So is the manual gear box, but this one’s automatic.
However, in this particular vehicle (a hybrid Toyota Corolla), the indicator is on the right, not the left. Every minute or two I’m barking “BUGGER!” as my windshield wipers flip on.
YOU try touching your windshield wipers just before you indicate while you’re driving and see how successful you are. 40 years of driving is a LOT of ingrained behavior.
Thankfully, I rented the car on a Saturday morning in downtown Wellington so there was precious little traffic to witness me weave around their one way streets. One of the things that keeps me in the proper place is the innate knowledge that while driving, I need to be in the middle of the road.
That doesn’t work so well in a one-way system.
Managed to get the car back to the hotel without issues but glad no one was with me carrying a cuss pot.
It was drizzling as we set out from Wellington, and I turned off the wipers, checked over my shoulder and changed lanes… without realizing what I’d done. Beloved is, I think, counting the number of times I turn on or off the wipers.
The other thing about driving here – the names. I’m comfortable working/driving in Hawaii, having spent a fair amount of time there – the names of things get confusing when you’re not used to them… Kaunakakai, for example, can get you focusing on the word rather than the fact you want to get to that street, and many words are very similar to each other to the uninitiated.
Māori is different from Hawaiian in that they don’t seem to stuff as many vowels into their words, and the pronunciation is different, which is a little unsettling – I can fake my way through Hawaiian and sound reasonably respectful, but Māori has different rules.
On the other hand, both Polynesian languages use wāhine so at least I’m good when I’m looking for a loo. No idea about the men’s room but for me, who cares?
So we drove up to Lake Taupo, a bit further than midpoint, and spent the night before going to the Waitomo Glow Worm Caves. Discovered more than 125 years ago, the caves have luminescent larvae attached to the ceiling.
They take you on a walk through a limestone cave, down to where you climb into a boat in the (near total) darkness to float around and view the glowing pinpoints of light. It’s quite beautiful.
Before entering the boat, the guide explained the nature of these critters. First, as larvae, to eat, they emit about 30 strands of sticky mucus that captures flies and other insects. They then pull the strand back up and hello dinner.
Once they pupate and hatch, they’re doomed. The insects lay eggs in the ceiling which becomes the next generation, but as they have no mouths and no… uh… digestive tracts… they’re not long for this world.
It occurred to me there’s probably a fair amount of cannibalism going on, given the glowy little buggers feed on “flies”, but I decided to keep my yap shut about that one.
They appear very reminiscent of Pirates of the Caribbean, floating through the swamp, although these little points of light are a bit more blue than the white color of the “fireflies” they have in the Disney ride.
The guide also abashedly admitted they’re not… actually… worms.
“But would you have forked over $62 to see glowing maggots?”
Ew. No.
Adding to this, we had to wait several minutes in the dark (very, very dark, the light came from the glow worms above) as the limestone dripped on our heads (“Hey, getting dripped on is good luck!” enthused the guide… yeah, I think he was trying to circumvent complaints…).
Beloved leaned over and whispered “All I can think about are the strands of snot over my head.”
Me… I was kind of preoccupied with the fact the ceiling was covered in maggots, glowing or not.
Then as though we were about to cross the river Styx, we were loaded into the boat with only a tiny flashlight to prevent us from going headfirst into the underworld.
We were one of the last few to board, and while I’ve lost some weight, I felt like the boat shifted precipitously when I stepped down onto it… and had visions of sending a crew of Japanese schoolboys for a swim.
They wouldn’t allow photographs inside the cave, but we were allowed to take pictures as we were leaving. Oh, oh, oh, grabbed my phone trying to get a picture of them… this was the only one I could get.
Examining Misadventures 