Blogs from Waitomo, North Island, New Zealand, Oceania

I spent the last ten days or so with an older couple in their massive house in the woods. I did a lot of painting and some concrete-wheeling for them, but generally, I was just vibing. Two families of wild birds would come visit twice a day, and I Love Them. I really enjoyed staying with them. They both are lovely, and I kind of already miss them. Now I'm headed for Raglan, I guess. I saw some glow-worms today! On the way to Raglan, we made a stop in Waitomo, and I decided to do a cave-tour, because i love rocks for some weird reason. It was a good cave. Saw some rocks. Saw some bones. But also! Glow-worms. They are bio-luminous maggots; the tour included a boat-ride in the complete darkness of the caves ... read more

Between tours of the Waitomo Caves, we made our way South to just outside Piopio.... read more

After three fun days in Auckland we started our journey south to Waitomo to visit the area and the famous caves and we weren't disappointed! The vegetation was beautiful with lush mountains and two lovely sunny days. The high altitude air was a bit cooler than in Auckland but the sun was warm. We stayed at a quaint 100 year old English country inn with great views of the surrounding area. We did a fantastic hike in the area that took three hours as we wound our way through tropical forest, farmland, streams and limestone caves. Very invigorating! Another highlight was our visit to the caves with numerous shafts dropping into under ground cave system and streams. There are 300+ mapped caves in the area with three main ones for tourists..... Ruakuri (which descends 65m), Aranui ... read more

After a late night check in, Jeff and I attempted to sleep off the gluttony we embraced at The Green Dragon to be ready for a completely different adventure. The day's activity was a complete 180°from the previous. So upon waking we attempted the coffee find...and discoverd there wasn't even a McDonalds to go to! This coffee delinquency is becoming a problem...where's our embassy? Get the Secretary of State on the line! (Although please make it Tea Leone rather than John Kerry, I feel Tea would understand the depths of the needs of these two Pacific Northwest travelers better than John.) These Kiwis need to discover the joys of java stat!...so being desperate, we came to the conclusion that we'd have to drink the instant that seems to be readily available. Well, the experience is not ... read more

Another busy day here in New Zealand, full of awesome bushwalks and glowworms! Jackie, Julia, and I left the backpackers around 8:40am for our bushwalk. The bartender that I bought my beer from last night said it would take about 2.5 hours to do the bushwalk, and we first stopped by the i-SITE so Jackie and Julia could buy a glowworm cave expedition. Thus I was a little short on time, since I needed to be back around 11:40am to get to my tour on time. But I figured I would do what I could and see what I could. Let me tell you this: the Ruakuri bushwalk is wonderful! For a lot of it you are actually walking through rolling farmland that is punctuated by these limestone rock pieces with cool layering in them. At ... read more