Volcanoes and Glowworms
Kia Ora! Seeing as I haven't actually used that one yet!
We are now on the North Island! Our boat was delayed by a few hours so we didn't get much time in Wellington. A very weird capital city though... no buidings above 10 stories! We had a quick look around and jetted up the coast to our destination for the night... another picknic (as they seem to spell it over here in places!) site. This one was particularly grotty but we picked up some pizza on the way so we barely had to get out of our little bubble car after dark. Mr Nuggles will be very pleased we have been educating ourselves with Smallville :oS
The next day was spent travelling to and around Mt. Egmont - A HUGE Volcano! Sadly we had amazing views on the way there but missed to take a photo and when we arrived at the visitor centre it was all hidden in cloud :o( Very impressive drive in though! We did a little walk through the rainforest down to Dawson Falls (a very pretty waterfall) and waited in vain for the sun to come out again before heading on to New Plymouth. Now I don't quite get it... why build a big town beneath a HUGE (did I mention it was massive) volcano... I certainly would buy a house there! It was a nice looking little town though.
By the evening we had reached Waitomo where we booked on to do some caving the next day. We had wanted to do the cheaper Black Water Rafting Option but the lady seemed terribly keen for us to do the "more challenging" abseiling and caving option and gave it us for almost the same price. She also recommended a carpark to sleep in so that was nice!
We started our caving adventure at 8am. Yuck - it was still dark. They took us to the cave location and kitted us up with some rather fancy gear. Black Wetsuits and White recycled abattoir wellies complete with harness and helmet. Nice. We looked and felt suitably stupid. They introduced us to the most scary looking abseil device I have ever seen and then we climbed down into the caves. The abseils were actually quite fun - all the more so because we got soaked as we were going down waterfalls. We followed the river down quite a fair way and stopped here and there and turned off our head torches so we could see the hundreds of glowworms all over the caves. Very cool. Now some bits was rather tight squeezes... and I have some issues with tight squeezes... especially when they are full of water. I checked with the lady if there wold be any such things and she said no... but I call me flat on my tummy crawling through water and having to tilt my head to one side to breath rather tight. Still... the slightly chubby Mexican girl infront of me gave me faith I would make it through alive and I did... and it was great fun! :o) I have a picture to prove it! :oP
After the caving we quickly showered and headed over to Tongario National Park where they filmed Mt. Doom (using the active Mt. Tongario) in Lord of the Rings! We had hoped to do the 1 day walk across the Tongario Crossing, but it is currently Alpine Conditions with high avalanche risk so no guides are going. We found a carpark under the mountains and woke up to a gloriously sunny day with wonderful views! We did a little walk to get some views and have now driven to Lake Taupo. I'm looking at skydives but think I might have to pass... it's pretty expensive.
We plan to go to Rotaroa next to take in some Maori culture.