[prev] -- Thursday, January 9, 2003 -- [next]

Packing up our minivan in the morning at Waitomo Caves

The Waitomo Caves Hotel

View from the Waitomo Caves Hotel

18:57 - Waitomo Caves - At 9am, we wandered around the Waitomo Caves Museum and learned about the local cave system, which so far has had about 50km's worth explored. At 9:30, we walked next door to the Waitomo Down Under building to meet up with our black water rafting guide, a man named Ross who is usually called "Irish." He had a deep laugh that rung with just a hint of foreboding doom in it (I think it was intentional). He took us to the rugby field building across the way and introduced us to Nikki, our second guide. We put on soggy wetsuits, soggy boots, and caving helmets, and boarded a van bound for a local cave. Black water rafting, in nutshell: a line of people sit with their bums stuffed into inner tubes (each holding onto the feet of the person behind them), floating down shallow rivers in a cave system, in pitch darkness sprinkled with the blue-green bioluminescence of glow worms and occassional jokes from the guide. We had a great time; the caves were really, really neat. I can only imagine what the main glow worm cave is like. Ours had on the order of hundreds of glow worms. The main glow worm cave has hundreds of thousands, or millions of them.

Waiting for our black-water rafting trip

Teri, Norm, me, and someone's thumb (ready to go black-water rafting)

On the bus, on the way to Waitomo Caves

Cave entrance, protected by an electric fence

Our guide, Ross "Irish", giving us an intro talk

Walking to the cave entrance

Practicing formations

Teri, descending to the cave entrance

Norm and Teri, at the cave entrance

Nom and me

Descending into the cave

Sitting in the first cave, letting our eyes adjust to the darkness

Glow worms!

Teri

Norm and Teri (who is fighting to stay on her tube)

Me

Teri and Norm (behind me)

The group, walking

Line of rafters

Teri and Norm, in the middle of the line

Teri kicks water at Irish

The rafting group

Teri and Norm

Teri, at the bottom of the slide

Sliding down the slide

Norm, in the caves

We're now driving on the west side of the North Island, on highway 1, just south of Levin. The hills are still lush with greenery and trees, but we're starting to see a few bare rock formations, and we passed a big snowy mountain not too long ago. The roads we're traveling on wind through small towns; in one of them, we stopped to eat lunch at the Copper Kettle (everything was fried!) to buy two CD-R discs (to burn music for the road -- our Previa has a CD player!), at the local "Everything Electric" store. The ocean is just over what we can see, to our right. We're going to turn in to Otaki Beach to see what it looks like. Actually, this area keeps handing us glimpses of terrain that reminds me of a greener version of coastal Northen California. It's beautiful.

Stopping for photos

We stopped here at the `Copper Kettle` to eat.

We stopped here at the `Copper Kettle` to eat.

Stopping for a gorgeous view

Stopping for a gorgeous view

New Zealand Scenery

Stopping on a random street for a view

Teri films something from the safety of someone else's lawn

A mountain view from a street in Otaki

Norm, driving

Teri, zoning out

At Otaki Beach

Otaki Beach

At the Brentwood Hotel in Wellington

Norm and me, on our computers

23:46 - Wellington - We arrived at the Brentwood Hotel (the guy at the front desk here is one of the nicest people I've ever met) at around 8:45pm and had a proper dinner at the hotel restaurant (the food was excellent). Tomorrow, we leave early in the morning for the ferry across to the South Island.

[next - jan 10]