Here at the hostel I'm staying in a room with Kyle and two other great guys from our group. We all get along real well and are having a blast. Our nightly ritual has become laying in bed and writing in our journals or in my case this blog. As lame as that might sound I actually really enjoy it as we're just joking around and talking about the days activities. We even went so far as to move two beds from upstairs to downstairs so we could all sleep in the same room. This type of stuff makes for good fun and I love the sense of community that we've already developed early on the trip.
This morning we traveled to the Maungatautari ecological sanctuary to do some hiking and exploring. Before Europeans traveled to NZ it was a rodent free island. When the Europeans did visit NZ and brought rodents with them NZ was instantly faced with a problem as they have no snakes or predators of rodents. The goal of the preserve was to create an area that is entirely rodent free so that birds and other native animals can live in an environment unaffected by rodents eating their eggs and destroying their nests. To accomplish this they built a rodent proof fence around the 8000 acre preserve and then used poison to entirely get rid of the rats. There are still some mice around but they estimate there are less than 200. The preserve itself was pretty sweet and felt like a rainforest with tropical trees hanging over the path. In addition, we experienced a fair share of rain while we were there so that also helped make it feel like a rainforest. Since everybody got pretty soaked we were forced to end our trek trough the preserve early.
From the preserve we traveled to Wiatomo, a small town built entirely on the tourism that they get for their caves. The caves feature really cool green and blue neon glow worms that hang out at the top of the cave. To visit these fascinating creatures, we boarded a small boat that took us around a river through the caves. The glow worms are awesome to look at when your paddling around in pitch blackness and we learned a lot about the worms and how the cave conditions are constantly monitored to ensure their survival.
After our boat ride we traveled to the nights accommodation. They welcomed us with some nice pizza and we all enjoyed a good meal. The rest of the night was relatively low key as we played some cards and hung out in each others rooms.
Later that night our room decided to use an air horn app on my phone and some speakers to have some fun with the girls next door. We were able to open one of their windows and put the speakers inside their room to get a realistic and quite loud sound. As childish as this prank might sound it was hilarious to all of us and felt like we were on some sort of high school trip. It's stupid stuff like that that makes for good times and good laughs.
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