New Zealand - Auckland, Hahei beach, and Waitomo Caves

Auckland

First night in Auckland, we went to the hostel bar and partook in a silly game - who could fit the most elastic bands around their head! Mike won of course, and he won...a free bungy jump off the Auckland harbour bridge!!! So the next day we went bungy jumping! It was only 40 m but very fun. We weren't scared or nervous at all! We discovered that day that our last minute planning did not work well with public holidays (i.e. Easter)... We were hoping to rent a camper for the next 5 days until we were going to meet Mike's uncle Dan in Rotorua, but we were unable to get one. We had a hard time finding a rental car as well, but we finally found one that was quite cheap and could be taken one way (even if it meant we had to bus back to the airport to pick it up!) After coming up with a plan for the next few days, we wandered around the city a bit and then went to see Avatar at the IMAX. There wasn't much open on Good Friday!

Saturday, April 3

Went to pick up the rental car after a little fiasco (not being able to find the company, different phone book, not writing down phone number...) but eventually we were on our way. We drove to Hahei beach and after a couple tries found a hostel to stay in within a campground. We went to Cathedral Cove, and hiked into a beach with cool limestone formations (including a big limestone arch).

We shortly discovered, however, that everyone in NZ was spending their easter long weekend up there too, and all tourist attractions were very busy. We tried going to Hot Water Beach, where you can dig a hole at low tide and sit in a natural thermal pool, but when we arrived we realized the only thermal region was surrounded by a hord of about 50 people! It was really crowded and the holes people had dug were just deep enough to stand in, but the water was warm...we left shortly after haha. We met a cool NZ guy that night at the hostel who told us the Tongariro Alpine Crossing day hike was really great, so we decided to do that after visiting the Waitomo Caves.

Sunday, April 4

We drove through Matamata hoping to go on a Hobbiton Tour, but we didn't end up having enough time to do it. However, we drove past the place where Hobbiton was filmed for Lord of the Rings and it definitely looked like the Shire! In fact, a lot of the scenery we've seen so far has looked like it - beautiful hills with pastures full of sheep and cows and scattered forests. I call it all the Shire.

We went on a 4 hour caving expedition called "The Lost World" in the Waitomo Caves region. We soon found out why it was called that. Hidden in a farmer's sheep pasture, amid a forest was a giant gaping hole into a cave, 100 m deep! It was absolutely the most gorgeous thing I have ever seen, and had vines and other vegetation growing down the sides of it. We got to do a 100 m abseil down into the cave (a little uncomfortable on the crotch and legs...Mike's leg went very numb and took a little while to recover haha), then we climbed up various rocks and ledges into the dark tunnel and saw some glow worms. They are basically maggots that are the length of a match stick that emit a glow from their stomach. They don't have bowels or anything, so they burn their waste in their stomach, emitting a light! It looked like a starry sky. Apparently they spend most their life in the larval stage where they catch flies and bugs with the long sticky strings they hang from the roof of the cave. Then later they become a fly for 3 days that is incapable of eating (no mouth), so they reproduce and then are eaten by other glow worms. Crazy life.

Waitomo comes from the Maori (aboriginal) words "tomo" which means hole, and "wai" which means water. A lot of the names here are Maori and hard to pronounce. "Maori" is pronounced "mow-ree" (mow like cow).






Oh, and near the end of the caving we had to climb up a 30 m long ladder. That was reallllly sketchy, especially because it was so slippery and you couldn't see into the darkness you were climbing into. When we reached daylight again, we were in another cave hole surrounded by cool limestone formations covered in vines. It looked like some temply out of Indiana Jones. Sooooo cool.

We found out that people in NZ hate possums because they are the reason kiwi birds are going extinct and now can only really survive in reserves - they eat the eggs. Our caving guide told us if we see one at night on the road we have to run over it. We have seen TONS of dead possum road kill (about 50 so far), but no live possums yet.