1) Waitomo Caves
Very very neat! We had considered travelling from Rotorua to Waitomo to do a full day of caving, but were discouraged by the travel time and had other adventures to do. So when our bus was able to detour around to Waitomo and we were able to do a quick walk-through caving tour, we were quite excited. Like I said on the previous blog, I really had no idea what this caving thing would entail. Well essentially there are hundreds of caves in this little area of Waitomo (about 300 to be exact). The geography of the area is that there are numerous limestone caves under all this farm land--if you own land and it has a cave underneath, you own a cave!! So there are many many companies that will take you into their caves and show you around. Since we only had limited time, we just got to go on a walk-through cave--but you can go on tubes through the water channels in the caves, and do all sort of adventurous things like cliff jumping and stuff.
So the guide takes you down a ton of stairs and you are walking through a tunnel system underneath a farm. The pictures definitely don't do it justice, but it is quite neat. In the cave we were in there are a bunch of these glow worms--literally little worms that have the ability to shine a light from their body and look quite neat in the caves. They turn these lights on to attract bugs--bugs see the light and fly towards it, thinking it is the outside. These worms have string like webs (think spider webs) that the bugs then get attached to, and then they can eat the bugs to survive in these caves.
Sorry no pictures of them actually glowing—we literally took about fifty pictures and tried to capture the little green glowworms in the dark, but weren’t really successful. The last pic is a glow worm at the entrance to the cave—you can actually see the worm and his lines quite well here.
2) National Park
Then we were off to Tongariro National Park for our four day hiking adventure. The hike is 44km in total, reaching an altitude of about 1900m. The first day, known affectionately as “the ditch”, literally sees you walking through a series of eroded paths. We arrived at our first hut without any issues, but were quite happy to see the hut—the clouds were rolling in and the rain started about 30mins after we made it to safety.
The second morning we awoke to a blanket of clouds—literally, you couldn’t see the mountains we were next to! The rain had let up (for the moment) and the warden promised us only winds of up to 65km/h at the top, so we took off on our second day. The second day of this hike is the famed Tongariro Alpine Crossing—New Zealands best one day hike. Here you go from an altitude of about 1150m, up to your summit of Red Crater around 1900m, back down to 1300m at the second days hut. As you are doing the crossing, you are cutting through the ridge that separates the two volcanoes in this park. It is quite a neat area—the entire National Park has dual world heritage status due to the nature aspects (it’s a volcanic field, which also hosts forests and dessert area) and its cultural aspects to the Maori people (the indigenous people in New Zealand).
We leave our little hut off on our expedition--you walk for about an hour on flat planes along a river and then you start your ascent. This is where my sherpa was needed--with the rain/snow/sleet starting, Ang found this park quite difficult and needed assistance from her very generous husband!! You begin to hike up the crater and the wind starts picking up. At the top of this crater the wind was so fierce that we were sure we were going to blow off the mountain. Literally we were holding each other, trying to get from one large rock of covering to the next to offer us some shelter from these winds. You have to walk head-on into the winds, to avoid being swept off the mountain!! We come to find out later that the 65km/h winds they predicted were not quite accurate--they were measured to be greater than 100km/h the afternoon we crossed (they usually recommend you not to cross if they are higher than 80km/h!). Once you get over the ridge you get the beautiful views of the red crater and the crater lakes--all due to volcanic activity. Everything here also smells like sulphur and you can watch the gases rising while you are hiking! We made it down the other side and out of the crazy winds, finally making it to our day two hut. Definitely beautiful views--well worth the hike!
Day three and four were much easier over rolling hills. You walk through desert areas, followed by forests dotted with rivers and waterfalls--very interesting landscape. We had some clear skies these days and got some nice pics of the volcanoes (Mt. Ngarahoe is known as "Mt Doom" to you Lord of the Ring nerds!!)
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| "The Ditch" |
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| Hut Day 1 |
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| Red Crater |
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| Crater Lakes and sulphur gases |
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| Mt Ngarahoe (Mt Doom!!) |
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| My Sherpa!! |
3) Wellington
We are currently in the capital city of New Zealand. This beautiful little port town has the most amazing waterfront I’ve ever seen in a city. You can walk for hours along waterfront paths (we literally did today!!) and they have incorporated nice sculptures and art to really make the city unique. We were able to enjoy some New Zealand beer while watching the Sunday Night football game on Monday afternoon here (weird!!) and took in the Te Papa National Museum this afternoon. We are off to further explore the city tonight before taking the three hour ferry ride to the South Island tomorrow to stop over in Nelson for the next week or so. Nelson apparently is the sunniest New Zealand city, so we hope to have some more beautiful beach pictures for you!
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