New Zealand 2015; Waitomo

The next morning we got on the road to head to a small town called Waitomo which is famous for its caves with glow worms inside of it.
But first we had two stops...one to see sheep, and one to see kiwis.

There are more sheep than people in New Zealand and if you look at the Hobbiton pictures from the last post sometimes you might be able to see white dots on the hills outside Hobbiton.

We stopped of at a sheep show to see all the different varieties of sheep and to watch a display of sheep shearing and a sheep dog at work.

After the sheep show, we drove for another hour or so and went to a bird sanctuary that features New Zealand's national birds the kiwi.  I wasn't able to take any pictures of the bird because it is a nocturnal creature meaning the room was kept in darkness the entire time.  The bird that we saw was very aggressive towards its handler as she tried to feed it because Kiwis are very territorial.

Not my picture...just showing you what we saw. 

 Here are some other creatures we saw in the bird reserve.

After the bird reserve we continued our drive up to Waitomo.  We only spent one night in this one-street town and I unfortunately don't have any pictures from this day (at the moment).  This is where a number of our group decided to try something called Black Water Rafting. 
This is when you have an inner tube and you traipse through the Waitomo caves looking at the glow worms that live inside.  We walked through the caves and even jumped backwards off of a few short waterfalls.  Then we all linked together and floated down the river in pitch black to look at glow worms.  Here is one Google image of what we saw.