For our next adventure, we decided on exploring the Waitomo Caves. We showed up early for our tour, and shortly thereafter found ourselves putting on very stinky wetsuits, pants and helmets. After a little introduction to the basics of abseiling, I was the first of our group to descend into the cave. It was almost a 100 foot drop, but a very beautiful place to enter with a small stream running through it. Tracy fearless of heights by this time also enjoyed her descent.
Once the entire group made it to the bottom, we walked with our guide upstream in the cave and shut off lights to see awesome glow worm display. These little guys make small glowing blue dots on the cave ceiling. Actually, they are maggots, and it is their excrement that glows, but "Hey! Come check out the amazing glowing maggot poo!" just doesn't bring in the tourists. We then tubed back down through cave with lights off and bumping off walls (lots of fun). Once we had gone as far as we could on the tubes, we hiked a little further in the cave and squeezed and out of narrow passages while our guide, a young Scot, took pictures. Finally, we each in turn climbed back up out of the 100 foot cave while roped in for safety. All in all it was very fun experience!
We made our way to Auckland later in day, and while eating lunch at stop on the side of the road made friends with this rooster that was hanging around begging for food. We had a very interesting conversation with this man about roosters and how to eat them. A little weirded out, we continued to Auckland where we checked into a holiday park for the last time and gave all remaining goods away. I cooked soup for the last time, and while it was very good, we found ourselves looking forward to Thai cuisine.
The next morning we said goodbye to our camper and checked into our hotel. Much to our delight, the hotel had very nice fitness and spa facilities, which we took full advantage of over the next few days. Over the next few days, we explored Auckland as we also prepared to head to Thailand. Auckland is a beautiful city with many nice restaurants. We would write more about the tourist attractions, but ended up spending most of our time outside of our hotel either shopping or having slow meals in the restaurants and coffee houses around the city. Oh well, Thailand here we come!
No comments:
Post a Comment