Ishicilelwe: 03.12.2023
We drive further north, stop at beautiful sand dunes, go shopping and look for a place to park for the night. We decide on a parking space by the water, but also directly on the street. There's a lot going on here and we can't really relax. We make ourselves comfortable in the bus and plan our next days. Although shopping is always fun because the people are so incredibly nice and you always have a chat at the checkout and no one is in a rush, we are still really looking forward to a whole day without shopping! We first drive to the Waipu Caves, a huge stalactite cave with glowworms. How great is that? However, these are not real fireflies, but rather larvae of fungus gnats. They are hungry and want to catch insects with their disgusting, slimy threads, and to attract them even more, the threads glow blue. Well, just forget about it and keep thinking about cute little fireflies with glowing turquoise asses. We take off our shoes at the entrance to the cave, walk barefoot through the water and mud with our headlamps and go quite deep into the cave. You can see some of the "worms" despite the light, but it only became really impressive when everyone turned off their lights. After a while it got a little oppressive in the cave and when Maren said that she was going out again and was already starting to go, I panicked for a moment and quickly followed her. Next we drive to a waterfall and take a long, very leisurely walk. We bring out our most deeply hidden musical lyrics and sing out loud. We hardly ever see any people there and we probably won't see any animals given the volume. We look for a nice spot on the beach for the night, enjoy a beautiful sunset and set up the camping chairs. It's very cold and windy here again and we're very happy that we brought so many warm things with us. The weather is so difficult to estimate here. Although we always dress well, unfortunately I caught a really bad cold. Great... I hope I don't infect Maren.