Blogs from Waitomo, North Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 4

Ingredients 1 onion 2/3 cloves garlic 2 courgettes 1/2 tomatoes 1 red/yellow/orange pepper Italian herbs I chicken stock cube salt and pepper to taste Cajun seasoning 250 gms tofu 3 or 4 small mushrooms Couscous or bread roll (or 2) Chop onion into small pieces and fry in a little oil (spray can canola etc is convenient), add finely chopped garlic. Once they've started to fry gently, toss in chopped courgettes,tomatoes,pepper and add seasoning. Add a little water if it looks like it's sticking to the pan. If there's some white wine lying around, now's a good time to add it. But not too much - it's better drunk. Add seasoning. Allow the whole lot to cook and soften up for 10 to 15 minutes. Then add tofu and mushrooms and let them warm through for ... read more

With the amount of time and effort it takes to write these blogs I've decided to just keep it simple and use captioned photos. If I get the time I'll put in more detail but for now I'll just keep it brief! Key events: -Curlys Bar: truly awesome bar at the youth hostel - everyone got completely bladdered and the barmaid let us pour our own drinks for free! -Caving/black water rafting: Abseil, zip-line, black water raft and climb waterfalls - tons of fun! In short, Waitomo ROCKS!... read more

Waitomo It was necessary to go back to Jucy Rentals in Auckland to get some issues with the campervan sorted out on Saturday 28th February. Unfortunately the stormy weather had continued from the previous night, turning into torrential rain and making driving rather unpleasant. From Auckland we drove 71km south to the famous Waitomo Caves. We arrived early afternoon and booked a Black Water Rafting trip for the following day then paid a visit to the Glowworm Cave. Admission into the Glowworm Cave was $38 each, but we got 10% discount - thank you YHA cards. We managed to just catch the 15:30 tour which turned out to be a curse rather than a slice of good fortune because our group contained 2 toddlers who were battling it out to become the biggest screamer. Also our ... read more

Early morning drive to the Waitomo caves where we set out on a five hour Abyss Adventure with The Legendary Blackwater Rafting Company. After gearing up we abseiled 40 meters down into the caves. Once down there we were treated to some extreme caving exploring via aerial zip lines, jumping off waterfalls, tubing and crawling and climbing places we didn’t think possible. We saw thousands of glow worms lighting the cave. Too bad they didn’t do anything to warm the 50 degree water. It was an exhausting and exhilarating trip and we were happy to check into our hotel in Hamilton for hot showers.... read more

Good morning all I think this is going to be a really long blog because not only has it been a while since I last updated but I have also done a lot in that time. So the morning after I last updated we headed on the Kiwi Experience to Rotorua. On the way we stopped for a walk in the rain. It was along a canyon over a dodgy bridge and back which was actually a lot of fun and had impressive scenary. Rotorua is a strange town as because there is a lot of geothermal activity nearby there is a smell of sulphur all over the town. Apparently it is the most visited town in New Zealand (99% of tourists go there). When we got there we headed straight for the luge which was ... read more