Mangawhai and Area (Nov 19-22)

Next stop... Gary Listers home in Mangawhai (North of Auckland). Gary and Sarah have a lovely home with a small vineyard way up on the hill overlooking Mangawhai, the water and Hen Island.


View of the ocean and Hen Island



Their small person vineyard just below the house





Gary talking to Rex on the phone

Sarah took Trevor, Arian, Kim (couple from Holland also staying with Gary & Sarah) and I to view a couple of local sites that Airan & Kim had found in a guidebook.. Piroa Falls and the Waipu Caves.

Piroa Falls. Trevor climbing right up to the falls

The book instructed us to go into a tiny cave and wait for our eyes to adjust to the dark. Than proceed on into chamber 1, 2 and 3 to view all the glowworms. Going from chamber 1 to 2 was just a bit of climbing around and over rocks. Going from the 2nd to the 3rd was a bit more difficult as we had to duck down through a low passage while walking through the water. It was a bit scary and out of my comfort zone... specially since on the guided tours in Waitomo they had said there were eels in their cave waters so there was a chance there were also eels in these cave waters but it was well worth it as there were more glowworms within this cave than we had seen in the pricey tours from Waitomo and this was free.  



Entering Waipu Cave



Trevor ducking down and making his way through the water to get to the 3rd chamber of the cave. The water got to nearly waist deep so we used our flashlights to spot larger rocks and try to make our way from rock to rock.

Arian & Kim used their expensive camera set on a slow shutter speed to capture the glowworms behind us and quickly flicked on and off a flashlight to spotlight us in the photo. Pretty cool!

Cluster of glowworms above us

Mangawhai Beach a short drive from Gary's house

Rotorua, Lake Taupo, Waitomo "Tiki Tour" (Nov 15-19).. Continued

 Continued....

Gyser in Rotorua



....On our way out of Rotorua we stopped to see the show at the Agrodome. It was too funny! They had all kinds of sheep breeds on display and did a sheep shearing demonstration on stage. We decided that one of the sheep kinda looked like a Eugene.. hahaha



Different breeds of sheep with dogs balancing on top, at the Agrodome.

"The Lister" at the Agrowdome. I believe it was an old sheep shearing device.

We were only in Lake Taupo for one night and did not see much unfortunately as it was pouring pretty much the entire time we were there. We did manage to hike out to a pretty powerful waterfall called Huka Falls while we were there though.

Next stop, Waitomo.. This area is full of all kinds of caves and cave tours. We did 2 tours here; the first one was the Glowworm Caves. They take you one a bit of a walk through a cave and than towards the end put you and a pile of others onto a row boat, on a river running through the cave, in the dark. From the boat you can look up to see all these glowing dots. It is a lot like looking at a beautiful starry sky. We learned that the glowworm is basically a larvae or worm that has a glowing butt. It captures insects to eat while it grows and eventually turns into a fly. The strange part is that it becomes a fly without a mouth and only lives 2-5 days before dying.

Standing at the point where we exited the cave on a row boat



Brochure of the two cave tours we took in Waitomo

The second tour we did was a 1.5 hour (1.6km) walking tour through another cave called Ruakuri. You enter the cave by walking down this large spiral walk way to the cave way underground. They have a walkway and small lights positioned along the way so that you can see some of the features of the cave. At one point we were asked to walk several minutes without any lights which was pretty freaky as it was pitch black and you could hear dripping sounds and running water from the river far below.

Spiral walk way taking us way down into the cave

Walkway through the cave. It was extremely dark so I was forced to use my flash and temporarily blind everyone to get any decent photos.

Guy hanging way up, with river below, installing anchors for a new cave tour. The new tour will have people repelling up, down and from side to side through the caves on a cable system.

Threads hanging from the glowworms. This is how they catch the bugs they eat.

Photo (without flash) of trevor walking infront of me

Scallops in the cave rock

Hobbiton, Rotorua, Lake Taupo & Waitomo "Tiki Tour" (Nov 15-19)

Our cheapo rental with Trevor driving on the "wrong" side of the road

We decided to go see all a bunch of the “must-see” tourist spots first so we rented a car and headed into the interior of the North Island (south of Auckland). Our first stop was at  Hobbiton.. For those of you, like myself, who don’t know anything about Lord of the Rings, Hobbiton is where parts of Lords of the Rings movies and later the Hobbit movies were filmed. There are lots of rolling hills, hobbit holes and sheep. Apparently they did an aerial search for a location for the set and came across the 1250acre area owned by a sheep farmer. Once filming had commenced the farmer would be called, sometimes with just a couple of hours notice, to move is thousands of sheep from the rolling hills behind the area they were going to film in next. Driving through the area we could see white dots all over the hillsides and can’t imagine how they were able to get every last one out of the shot.

Hillsides full of sheep

My favorite sheep at the Hobbiton farm



Party Tree at Hobbiton



Next, we headed for Rotorua were we planned to spend 2 nights. As we entered Rotorua we could smell rotten eggs (Sulfur) and knew we had reached our destination. Rotorua is full of thermal activity causing it to be a bit stinky.While in Rotorua we paid to enter the Te Puia thermal park and were pretty impressed. We were able to watch men working on Maori Carvings in a school they have there, women working on Maori basket weaving in the weaving school they have there, boiling mud pools, thermal waters, geysers and a kiwi bird.


Carvings at entrance of Gyser Park





Carving School




Top of silver fern

Bottom, silver side, of a NZ silver fern.

 


Steam from cracks in the rocks

One of the many bubbling mud pool

 

Rest of Tiki Tour...... to be continued.....

Auckland is "coo as" (Nov 11-15)

We arrived in Auckland late on Nov 11^th to stay in with the Kiwi Listers – Ron, Louise, Ben, Victor and Maddie. The first night we stayed up chatting with Ron and Louise and learned all about how the game Cricket works; which the boys all play. The next day the boys let me know that they were listening to us from their beds and laughing at our accents and the fact that we know “nothing”… nothing about cricket that is haha. On our second day with them the boys invited us to play cricket in the yard which was a lot of fun. I don’t think we were very good but the boys were really patient and encouraging. They have all welcomed us into their home and have been so nice. Trevor hasn’t seen Ron & Louise in around 20 years and had never met the boys but they definitely feel like family.

It is spring time here in New Zealand has been 18-20 degrees range with summer starting in December until February. It actually feels a lot like Vancouver here except the plants are really exotic looking. It’s very green here with lots of hills and the mountains in the distance. The roads are super windy and although we haven’t seen a speed limit over 110 the speed limits seem to be high for the roads. For example, on most roads we couldn’t speed if we wanted to cause the roads are so windy and we end up going several km’s under the speed limit. There are also “heaps” of traffic circles here (making me car sick while I type :S).

They have a lot of the same food chains as home like subway, KFC (way nicer KFC’s than at home), Burger King. I haven’t seen any of the same stores as we have but the malls still seem similar. You get used to the accent pretty quickly.. but there is the odd phrase or word that doesn’t make sense to me… Like “Entrée” is an appy, “Tomato Sauce” is Ketchup, tea is "dinner" etc.



Underground train station downtown Auckland

At some intersections, the indicator to walk will come on and you can walk in all directions including right through the middle of the intersection.



In the Skytower - sign showing the distance to Vancouver



View of the Harbour Bridge fromt he Sky tower

Lamb Sub at Subway.. mmmm tasty! Mcdonalds also has a Lamb burger but we havent tried that one yet.