NZ Day 4: Caving adventures and Hobbiton

We woke up bright and early on Wednesday for the most action-packed day of our trip. The day was starting off with rappelling 100 meters into a glow worm cave! We'd booked this activity a couple months ago and had been looking forward to it with a mix of nervousness and excitement.

We weren't allowed to carry personal cameras on the activity, for pretty obvious reasons. But our guides, Ian and Loz had cameras strapped to their gear and did a great job taking pictures for us, that they then emailed to us same day!

To give you a taste of what we did, here's a picture from the website of someone rappelling into the cave. It's a little fuzzy but you can get the idea that it was a looong way!

There a few highly intense moments during the rappelling. Probably the first one was having to sit out on the bar that we then pushed ourselves off from to start the descent. We were safely hooked in, but forcing yourself to sit down on a bar two feet away with hundreds of feet below you took a deep breath. But we all did it! Here we are, smiling and ready to rappel.

You can't actually see the bottom of the gorge in these pictures because the mist is covering it. I'm not sure whether that made it better or worse, but that's what we had to work with!

We rapelled down in groups of four with our guide. Here we are, getting down a bit faster than the other group.

I had a couple mishaps on the way down: my hair got caught in the caribener mechanism, but my hero Loz managed to get me freed. Also, all of our legs went numb on the 15 minute descent, and unfortunately that meant that I couldn't feel when my too-big boots were slipping off. In this picture, you can see my poor boot that fell a good 30 meters to the ground.

Here's the view from our descent:

 

And looking back to our starting platform:

Once we got brave with our rappelling, they took our picture mid-way.

 

After about 20 minutes (although it was really hard to judge time), we made it to the bottom safely! The best thing about being on the ground was getting blood flow back into our legs. It was also a huge adrenaline rush! Everyone was a little bit shaky, but our guides had a little snack of orange juice and a chocolate bars, which helped smooth things out a bit.

Also, as we made our way into the cave opening, it was so amazing, it was hard to think about anything but what we were seeing with our own eyes.

Loz and Ian took a few pictures of us with a cool silhouette in the background.

Then we headed further into the cave where we could see glow worms. But to be honest, I'd completely forgotten we were going to see the worms, because the cave was just so cool.

When we switched off our headlamps, lights immediately appeared in the ceiling of the cave, which was about 10 feet above us. There was a cluster of a few hundred little spots of light, just glowing away! Each light was created in part by the glow worm's dung, and it attracts little cave bugs to the webs hanging down from the worms, which is how the worms eat. It was really, really cool.

Unfortunately, the last bit of our journey was a climb up a vertical ladder outside the cave. Where the rappelling was the scariest for Holly and Toby, the ladder was completely nerve-wracking for me. I was worried that I wouldn't be fit enough for the 30 meter climb, and I also had visions of slipping off the ladder, which was narrow and slick with mud. Of course, we were safely attached and could get pulled up by the guides at any time, but seeing the ladder disappear into darkness didn't do much for my nervousness.

Holly, Toby, and I were the last to go up, as Loz had out Toby in charge of getting us all attached after he went up with the first group. Luckily, we all made it up in good time, especially Toby! And then we took one final picture in our exit back to solid ground.

This activity was easily in my top 5 things of the trip so far. But the biggest thrill - at least for one of us - was still to come. We did a quick change in the bathrooms at the caving center, ate some trail mix in the car, and booked it to Hobbiton for our afternoon tour.

Hobbiton was in the middle of nowhere. We learned that Peter Jackson found the farm when he was flying over potential movie sites and thought it was pretty much perfect.

We learned some interesting movie trivia during our tour. Like the tree on top of Bilbo Baggins home was cut down from the other side of the island and then replanted in Hobbiton for the first three movies. By the time they started filming The Hobbit movies, the tree had died, so they made a new one with a steel frame and attached tens of thousands of fake leaves by hand. And we also learned, disappointingly, that none of the hobbit holes go much beyond the front door. We probably knew this deep in our hearts, but it was a sad reality to be faced with.

Even for less than rabid fans, the tour was still fun and interesting. It was also beautiful.

The tour ended with a beer at the Green Dragon.

Toby was very, very happy at this activity.

Our very long day ended in Taupo, about an hour and a half drive's south.

A co-worker of mom's recommended Bistro Lago to us for dinner, and it was great food with a lovely view. We couldn't have asked for a better end to the day!

Lake Taupo

 

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NZ Day 3: Driving to Waitomo

After we finished our hike to Rotorua, we started the drive over to our destination for the night's lodging: Waitomo! We had plenty of time to make the drive, so we took a few fun stops.

 

One of our stops was at a blueberry farm, which was a big hit with one of us!

And a bit later one, we stopped for a picnic lunch and ate some delicious New Zealand cheeses and fruit we'd bought before leaving Rotorua.

This is what you call a picnic!

By late afternoon, we arrived in Waitomo.

There's not too much to Waitomo; here's Holly and Toby with the entirety of the village behind them.

Luckily, we'd pre-booked our accommodations for the evening. We were staying at the Waitomo Caves Hotel. We knew we were in for a treat when we saw its website that said "Waitomo Caves Hotel is not for those of you seeking the modern sterile chic rather this is a sedate haven of faded decor, doubtful 60's renovations, sparkling crystal chandeliers, spacious clean rooms, deliciously comfortable beds and deep armchairs." We certainly found the first part of that description to be true!

The sweeping staircase, which was also described on the website, was something else!

The hallway to our room. I did my hair in one of these mirrors because the light was better than in our room

If the inside looked a little questionable, the outside brought a little reassurance because it was very charming and overlooked the valley of Waitomo.

And even though the hotel had a dining room (which had very high standards)...

...we were told they were not serving dinner. Which was probably not surprising given that there were only three cars in the lot besides ours. Luckily, though, there was a general store that sold food, as well as a cute little restaurant where we had a fabulous dinner!

We had an early appointment at the caves, so we called it a night pretty soon after dinner - not that there seemed to be much of a nightlife in Waitomo. We learned that our room had neither air conditioning or a fan, so we opened the windows, opened the hallway door, out the chain lock in and enjoyed a good breeze for the night. I don't know if we would describe ourselves as "deliciously comfortable," but we slept pretty well and enjoyed our Waitomo night!

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NZ Day 3: Waimangu Volcanic Valley

Our main plan for Rortura was to see some geothermal activity. There are a lot of spas in the town where you can bathe in hot springs, take mud baths, that kind of thing. But given the amount of time we had, we decided to go for a hike and see the raw nature of Rotorua. So we drove about 20 minutes south of the city to Waimangu Volcanic Valley.

The drive was beautiful, just like every one of our drives here.

Waimangu is an interesting area: the present-day geothermal features were all made relatively recently in 1886. Since then, the area has been a tourist destination, and there even used to be a hotel there in the early 1920s for tourists to come experience all the pools and springs. There has been a lot of change in the area, even since 1886: there was a geyser that erupted regularly for 4 years in 1900, and then just stopped. And the latest hydrothermal eruption was in 1973 - not so long ago! Seems like it's due for another one, but luckily we got in and out without any eruptions.

The area is now set up for visitors to take a 2-3 hour walk that goes around the most interesting areas as it descends to Lake Rotomahana. Then you get bussed back up to the top, which is quite handy! So that's what we did!

Even from the beginning of the walk, you could see steam coming up from the hills we would be walking through. So exciting! Toby and I both felt like dinosaurs could come walking out of the bush at any moment.

Toby also took this opportunity to use Dad's GoPro to capture the walk in real time. Video coming soon!

Our first significant stop was Frying Pan Lake.

The average lake temperature is 131 F, so as we got close we could hear the water around the edges of the lake boiling. Very cool! The steam also would wash over us, and we got warm just being near the lake.

The lake overflows into Hot Water Creek, where the water cools down to about 122 degrees. It also leaves lots of mineral deposits, which means the stream bed is bright and colorful.

The next interesting stop and my personal favorite was Inferno Crater Lake. It is actually a geyser, but the geyser is at the bottom of the lake, which was bright blue on the day we saw it. That's not always the case, so we felt very lucky!

Just like Frying Pan Lake, the water was extremely hot and the steam rolled over us in waves. Completely amazing!

After Inferno Crater Lake, Holly and I took a detour up and across the mountain top for a scenic overlook, while Toby stayed on the downward trail. It was a long vertical climb, but the views were great!

The rest of the walk was still interesting but with less spectacular geothermal features. There were these terrace formations that were formed by hot springs that bubbled up boiling water that slowly streamed over the rocks.

And then we finished our walk at Lake Rotomahana, where we caught the shuttle for a 20 minute ride back up the mountain.

Yay for a good walk in the volcanic valley!

 

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