We awoke to find that some numpty had stolen my bikini that had been drying on the front of our van. I mean come on, who steals a wet bikini? Surely there are better things to pinch?! Especially seeing as that I have to buy different size pants and tops so if a girl was planing on wearing it she’d have to have a messed up body size wise like mine! What was worse was that the pants part was also part of another bikini set so basically I lost two bikinis in the theft! Utter rubbish! If it was a bunch of guys that stole it then that’s very pathetic and I hope they regretted their actions in the morning. Ollie did try and search for it but to no avail. So yea moving on...
We left Rotarua and began our drive across to the Waitomo caves as we’d heard a lot of good things about them and wanted to check the ‘Glow Worm’ cave out for ourselves. Along the way we spotted a small market at the front of a kiwi orchard that was selling them at 25c a kilo! Unable to believe the sign we stopped off and managed to pick up six kiwi fruit, three avocados and a bag of tomatoes all for just over seven bucks. Amazing! The kiwis only cost us 16c! So from now on road side stalls are definitely where we will be buying our fruit and veggies from. And to make it even better, the avocados were ripe and ready to eat, a real bonus considering there’s one on our dashboard that has been ‘ripening’ ever since we left Auckland. I’m starting to wonder if it’s just a plastic one!
The entrance to the caves looked like we were entering the Eden project. The huge transparent canopy held up by a large wooden frame and the out door cafe was very similar and the ‘eco’ kind of feel to the place was presented in the same way. We bought our tickets and headed over to wait for the next tour to begin. We had fifteen minutes to wait so Ollie said he would treat us to a coffee. It was a lovely idea but unfortunately the coffee was horrible and we waited so long for it to be made that we had to skull it so we could make the tour in time! I’ll add at this point that since working on my own coffee making abilities over the last five months I have become less and less tolerant of ‘badly made’ cups of coffee, much to Ollie’s annoyance! But even he had to agree that his coffee wasn’t great!
Luckily the tour was much better than their coffee and we descended into a magnificent cave system of limestone stalactites. There were even a few stalagmites (Do you know which is which??) which as all geologists know, are pretty rare! We weren’t allowed to take pictures in the cave which was a shame but as Ollie and I had learned previously, the flash of cameras can kill the glow worm. After learning about how the cave was discovered (A Maori dude who owned the land and a British Servyor dude found it together one day around 1870) we were led into a large tunnel that was called the ‘Cathedral’. A limestone rock on one side looked like a giant pipe organ and apparently some singers have given concerts in there and they hold a carol service every year. It was at this point that our guide asked if anyone in the group was a singer and wanted to try out the excellent acoustics. A two year old girl put her hand up and said she would sing twinkle twinkle little star. And what happened next had me nuzzled into Ollie’s shoulder trying to push giggles back into my mouth.
The guide and the girl started singing and then all around us other members of the group joined in until a shambled version of the song tumbled out into the pitch black we were stood in. But what made it funny was that not everyone new the words and half our group couldn’t really speak English. And if the lights had been on no one would have dared sing! My favourite part had to be ‘How I glunder bot moo par’. Classic! We pinched ourselves just to make sure we hadn’t just been transported into some random universe!
We followed the guide down another flight of steps and waited to board our boat. We moved off in silence across the water and it was pretty eerie. But as we drifted into the central part of the cave there above us shone tons of tiny little glow worms that formed a beautiful starry sky above us. They were mesmerizing and impossible to take your eyes off. As our sight adjusted, more appeared and soon the whole ceiling was lit up by the worms. It has to be one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen and definitely worth seeing. We got to spend even longer in the cave than we were meant to as well because we had a guide that was training with us as well and he wasn’t very good at steering the boat so we got an extra Tiki tour (strawberry shortcut) added to our boat ride! We emerged at the other end of the cave into a pretty river surrounded by forest.
We set off in our van once again, this time with Taupo as our destination. We wanted to see some snow though and so first we drove further south towards Mt Ruapehu and the National Park. The road down was a magnificent mixture of grassy hills, forests, snow capped mountains and many, many sheep and cows! The phrase of this whole trip so far has to be ‘wow’ because we say it around nearly every bend. The scenery outside the windows never has a dull moment and there is always something to marvel at. Having seen our first bit of New Zealand snow (a hard concept to get our heads around but still) we found a place to park up for the night. Naturally we chose a ‘Tree and a Bench’ area.
To explain, whilst driving around the North Island ever since we got here, Ollie and I have always laughed at the sign posts showing a Tree and a Bench. Mainly because there are so many but also ‘cos sometimes there is only a tree or perhaps only a bench and it’s the kind of thing you find amusing when you’ve been driving for so long that you have a bit of cabin fever (A bit like ‘Stiker’ or ‘Buckland Monochorum’ for family in the know!). So Ollie and I shout out ‘TREE AND A BENCH’ every time we see a sign and then rate the site on how good it is, the size of the tree, condition of the bench etc. Damn silly I know but we have a laugh!
12/7/12
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