I hope you enjoyed the last blog. It's somewhat of a different style, combining sentence and short form together, but hopefully it gives you a taste for what we have been up to! Again, my apologies for spelling and grammatical errors. It's tricky to self edit on the iPad so this'll have to do!
Our next stop was Waitomo Caves (more specifically a company called Blackwater Rafting) where we repelled 27 metres into a cave and we were able to float down the pitch black water on inner tubes! We had little head lamps on our helmets buT at this point turned them off so that we could see the millions of little glow worms...the coolest thing! The whole adventure was 5 hrs (including driving to the caves and suiting up in full on wet suit gear) so towards the end we were getting a little chilly. Our guide Amy handed out cups of hot juice (surprisingly delicious) and three pieces of chocolate to give us a bit of energy to get out of the cave. The only way out was to climb what we had just repelled down. Jordan of course was up in a jiffy while I took just a wee bit longer, but still made it up in under 5 minutes. The caves were well worth the money we spent and we would definitely recommended it to everyone! We were one of two other couples that did this little adventure. One of the couples, who was on their honeymoon from Ireland, were on a six week adventure stopping in Fiji, Australia, NZ, LA, and Dallas...all in six weeks!! It was unbelievable...they had flown into NZ for only four days and were planning on seeing the North and the South Islands...not entirely sure how they were planning on doing that as Jordan and I are finding that one month is not nearly enough time to be ale to spend in NZ. (I think if it weren't for family and friends back at home....I can see my mom tearing as I'm writing this...we would probably live here for a while since we love it so much! But don't worry Ma, we are coming home...eventually!).
After Waitomo Caves, we drove two hours south to Rotorua (Roto meaning lake in the native Maori language and rua meaning two). Going a little off topic here, the majority of town names and lakes all have Maori names which is very similar, I found, to Hawaii and how their towns are all named in the Native Hawaiian language...too cool! Anyways, Rotorua is the adventure spot on the North Island and has all sorts of activities including Zorbing (which was first invented in NZ) and luging. Rotorua also has a whack of thermal activity where you can actually see mud bubbling in the middle of the city! They have thermal pools all over the town which absolutely wreak of sulphur...so much so that we kept on driving when we pulled into one of the places you could have a thermal bath! Isaac and Mia, who I will be referring to a lot in these blogs re NZ , recommended use to do the luge in Rotoruaa. Essentially you are on a little toboggan with bicycle handle bars and you zoom down a windy ski hill...let me tell you, we had an absolute blast!!! I've never had so much fun on a little toboggan than on this luge track....we were definitely going the fastest out of anyone on the track and we would race each other down the hill! Jordan won twice (because I let him..didn't want to damage his self esteem) I won once. Apparently there is another luge track on the South Island, so we are hoping to hit that up before we leave...so much fun!!
We also had Wendy's for the first time in a year!!!! NZ has so many things from home that Australia doesn't have so we are feeling a but closer to home (even though we are further than ever!). Here's a list of things that NZ has that Australia didn't for home:
Queen Anne's lace
Wendy's
Burger King
Fruit loops/Cheerios
Dodge and Ford trucks
Nature valley bars
Bagels
Starbucks (had a gingerbread latte yesterday....yum!)
Trivial to everyone at home but having these things around us make us feel a little bit closer to home, which during the holiday season is nice! Haha
Anywho, after Rotorua we drove on to Taupo were we ended up finding this incredibly hot thermal river where we bathed in...well sort of. It was so hot that you could only stay in for a couple of minutes but nevertheless, it was really cool to be swimming in a hot river! We spent the night at a free campground called Reid's something rather and ended up driving straight to Wellington (the southern tip of the north island). While driving into the city we spotted a caravan park (of sorts) in the middle of the downtown...right on the water!! We ended up staying there that night and enjoyed a (much needed) hot shower. I ended up falling asleep at 7:45 for the night! I think it might by endless days of fresh air but I never have a problem falling asleep! The next day we wandered around Welli enjoying the free Te PaPa museum and their free Internet! We were able to catch up on all that we had missed and even write a few emails to back home! (It's crazy how so much happens in such a short amount of time...but at that same time, it's nice to be completely disconnected from the digital world!).
After the museum we wandered the Sunday markets and even checked out the Hobbit exhibition they had going on. As some of you know I'm sure, I loveee The Lord of the Rings trilogy (yes, a little bit of a geek in me) and the prequel to these movies, The Hobbit, was made in NZ recently. Anyways, they were hosting the world premier of the movie only a couple of days after we left Wellington (sad face) but on this day, they were showing how they did the make up of the Orcs (scary creatures in the movie)...Dad, I'm sure you'll appreciate this! The whole make up process takes three hours for each person (sometimes they had over 300 to do in one day!) and at least an hour or two to take the make up off. We watched this process for a bit while one of actors answered questions about the movie and about Peter Jackson (the director) who he referred to as PJ. It was so interesting! (Jordan was a good sport about this as he is not nearly the fanatic that I am!).
That night at 8 we caught the three hour ferry to the South Island that dropped us off in Picton. We slept in a parking lot that night...surprisingly there were no "no camping" signs, so we took full advantage...even cooked our breaky there in the am!). Random sidetracking here but this town had the craziestttt toilets! Everything was electronic to the sliding door, the lock and unlock, the toilet paper, the soap dispenser, the water (which when turned on would flush the toilet) and the hand dryer. Oh, and did I mention that jazz music was turned on once you entered and you were thanked by the toilet gods when you exited for using "Ezeeloo"?....like I said, crazy! Jordan was in love.
We then carried on to the Marlborough Sounds, reached by a beautiful road with some fantastic views of the islands. We found a beautiful little private beach were we went for dip in the freezing ocean! After, we drove west to a town called Nelson where we enjoyed free internet from Makkas (McDonalds). We were able to FaceTime my family for a little bit but then I think the employees switched off the Internet bc we were using up their bandwidth...or it could have been because we didn't buy anything... But hey, it's expensive here! Like I was telling my family, a Big Mac meal here is $12.80!)
Thanks to Mia and Isaac, again, we had NZ's best fish and chips (they were delicious) and found a beautiful campsite by the river where they stayed on and off for three months! One spot in the river is even deep enough to dive I ( I'd say at least 8-10 ft deep), so we busted out the shampoo and had a much needed river bath! We loved this campsite so much we decided to stay two nights. The days were filled with jumping in the river and reading our books on the cushions from our van...hippies to the max, but it was by far the most relaxing day we've had yet! Now that we are on the South Island and we've got three weeks, we are taking it a bit slower and soaking it all up!
Well, that's it for now..hope you enjoyed!