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Published: February 20th 2009
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2-14-09
The last update I sent was from Raglan, New Zealand. This small and friendly place kept me a few more days than I expected. I camped at a great campsite that was a 5 min walk over the inlet via a walking bridge. It dumped you right in town. I spent the next couple of days kite boarding and hanging out enjoying the town. Check out the sunset from my camp in the pictures.
I meet several nice Kiwi’s(New Zealander’s) and got an offer to visit them in Mt Taranaki. It was a bit off my path and I had been taking longer than expected on the Northland so instead I headed directly south to the Watimo
Watimo is know for having over 300 caves and most of them have rivers running through them. I spent the day repelling down a 100 meter cave opening, then zip lining in darkness to the bottom, followed by floating through the caves with bright glow worms above us, squeezing through tight openings and climbing up waterfalls inside the cave. It was and amazing and I could have spent many more days down there exploring.
The caves are know for these glow worms. They are actually glow “larva” but it did not quite have the same ring to it. These larva cling to the ceiling on long sticky threads. In the pitch dark caves, they put off a glow that attract insects that get caught in the threads. They then eat the insects for food. Eventually they become a mouth-less fly of some sort that sets out to breed, lay eggs and die over 2-3 days. Check out the pictures, they are very cool and extremely bright in the caves. The roof of the caves looked like they were covered with a million bright green starts. Unfortunately I could not get any pictures of the glow worms in action.
My next stop was intended to be a quick visit to Wellington. Wellington is the capital city of New Zealand and houses the Parliament. New Zealand is a Commonwealth of England and the Queen of England is also the Queen of New Zealand. It’s a nice city of about 200K people that rests along Wellington harbor. It is also the Southernmost city of the Northland and jumping of point to the ferry to the Southland.
Once in town, I found out that Wellington’s largest party weekend was that weekend. Not only was it the biggest public holiday, it was also the weekend of Rugby Sevens. There are two days of Rugby and a ton of partying. Thanks to Mike Shouse (Thanks Mike!) I was fortunate enough to get tickets to the games. This was the biggest party I have ever been to. Everyone, and I mean everyone dresses up for the games. They don’t just dress up, entire groups of friends dress up together. I saw 20+ fairies in pink tutu’s, girls and guys, groups of Smurfs, Umpa Lupa’s, hillbillies waving the American flag and a blow up machine gun(one was actually an American), and many others. Make sure and check out the pictures and videos. The entire stadium from noon till 9PM was partying and that night they all head downtown. It was quite a scene that I was very fortunate to be able to attend. I would not be surprised if I was one of the only person at the games that had no idea what it was two days before.
Note, the Kiwi’s are typically pretty laid back and I have been told that this is the biggest party in New Zealand. There were groups from all over the country that plan months in advance for this weekend.
I almost forgot to mention that the day before the games Mike and I went to a Reggae festival cerebrating Bob Marley’s birthday. Great Reggae music and food all for less than $20 on a beautiful day.
After recovering from a day and a half hangover, thanks again Mike!, I finally jumped on the ferry and headed to Nelson. By the way, I rescheduled my ferry in Wellington three different times. They guys and gals at the ferry office got quite the kick out of it.
Nelson is a small artsy community that is known to have the best weather of New Zealand. My new friends Ash and Laurel put me up for the night in Nelson and gave me great advice for my next month on the South Island. Thanks Ash and Laurel!
My next stop was Abel Tasman National park where I did a two day kayak and hiking trip.
I also added some more pictures of Big Blue since several people have ask about it.
Cut and paste the link below into your internet browser to see my latest pictures.
http://picasaweb.google.com/csdyer2020/NewZealand212009Till2142009?authkey=X1_efqOKI00#
I have not downloaded pictures from my last week or so but hope to do this soon.
Cheers,
Chris
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Charles
non-member comment
Damn I am jealous
Sounds like a blast man! Keep us up to speed. I may be in Singapore/Hong Kong in late March/early April. Let's try to meet up. -CM