The Adventures of Jim & Rhonda

We have been having the most fantastic time here in New Zealand! This may be the most beautiful country ever and the scenery just improves around every corner. Distances are quite short so driving is a breeze and there is almost no traffic.

The last few days have been adventure filled. After leaving Rotorua we headed West to Waitomo planning on spending 1 night to see the Glowworm caves. All throughout New Zealand there is one group of campgrounds called Top 10 Holiday Parks that offer a 10% discount if you guy one of their cards. Since this was our only choice in the tiny hamlet of Waitomo we stayed there and glad we did as it was a very nice park. Great laundry, kitchen, and bathroom faciities, right next to the store, tavern and 1 nice restaurant in town and with very friendly owners (as is the norm everywhere here). We had originally planned to just do the glowworm cave and head on to Lake Taupo, however, after checking our options we did the 2-cave option of glowworms and Ruakuri cave. The NZ glowworm is an oddity. They have 4 stages of their life cycle (the adult form looking like a mosquito but with no mouth) and when they are in larvae stage they glow. After climbing down into the caves we boarded a boat where we were asked to be silent , all the lights were shut down and we drifted along looking up at what appeared to be the brightest starry sky you’ve ever seen but was, in fact, thousands of glowworm larvae. For food the worms hang down spittle threads about 4-6 inches long to catch bugs…truly bizarre creatures that seem to have no point in life, except making money for the locals in this area!

Next we headed to  Ruakuri cave for a 2hr walk through the cave. This entire part of the country is covered with hidden caverns and caves and in this cave they recently built a circular walkway 200ft down into the cave with pressurized doors on each end to keep the environment within the cave as natural as possible. Our guide was 5th generation in the area and had been playing and working in the cave his whole life and was part of the staff that added all of the recent improvements, at one point being part of the crew that had to swim with their gear to work everyday within the cave because that was the only point of entry at that time.

The interior was just gorgeous (don’t worry, we’re having some issues getting our photos onto flikr but we’ll add the link as soon as we can!) and included some glowworms of it’s own as wel as stalactites, stalagmites, columns, fossils, etc. The Waitomo river runs through the cave so the sound of rushing water added to overall ambience. It was nice to see that they were taking such care to preserve the caves rather than letting them be overrun by destructive tourists. That tour was well worth the price.

We decided we needed some fresh air so headed out on a short walk along the Waitomo river through forestland very similiar to Oregon except for a fewer different types of plants, most specifically the tree fern. The trees range from 5-8ft tall and have fern type tops. In many areas we’ve seen the bases used all in a row a fencing & bought a candle holder in Rotorua made of the wood of one and they have an amazing natural pattern in the wood. With all that we decided to spend another night in Waitomo rather than leaving late to Lake Taupo.

The drive to Taupo was as gorgeous as the rest of the journey so far, lots of livestock, very few other cars, and great scenery around every corner. I have decided that baby lambs are the absolutely cutest thing on earth (and I”ve seen a lot of them lately!)

Lake Taupo is a huge lake set in the center of the North Island. Taupo itself is a very nice little town with a very outdoorsy feel to it similier to Hood River for everyone back home. Lots of fishing and hunting stores, loads of pubs and cafes, etc. Today we spent all day fly fishing on a river with the clearest water I’ve ever seen. Lake Taupo is extremely clear a well and even driving along the roadside you can see the bottom up to about 15ft off shore. Tonight we’re just going to BBQ and hang out at camp. Life in the campervan is so great that we’ve actually extended it for a few more days so will be living out of it until 3 Oct.

We’ll try to get those pictures on line soon and tomorrow heading south to Waganui.

Cheers, Jim & Rhonda

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 11th, 2007 at 9:46 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.