Hot springs. Thermal vents and geysers. Bubbling mud pits. Steaming lakes with interesting colors and formations. What do these all have in common?

Sulphur.

The geothermal vents are everywhere here, puffing up like an underground paper mill. Visually very interesting. But the smell…

The waters are purported to be healing- the acidic springs soothing aches and pains, while the alkaline ones are natural antiseptic. At any rate, we are staying near Kuirau park that had several foot bathing areas.

Kevin gave it a go, but I was too weirded out by people soup.

I took videos of the boiling mud, but I haven’t figured out how to add those yet, so once again…until the big update. Here’s some stills of a few.

Sunny blue skies and warm weather set the stage for our visit to the Hobbiton Movie Set. We were amazed at how many people were on the grounds at the same time. It looked like they ran a new bus load of people every 15 or 30 minutes. I think there were easy close to 200 people on the grounds at any one time.

While it was amazing to see all the scale replicas of the hobbit holes, I think the main star was the beautiful plantings and gardens. They really set the stage to allow you to feel like you were among Hobbits who happened to step out.

The best part was of course getting to see Bilbo’s house. Photos are, you guessed it, on the other camera. But we did take a few with my phone.

Now we’re off to Rotorua to see what we can get in to!

This is Ratbag. He is resident kitty at Te Tiro. Getting up for your morning pee? You gotta pay the toll.

Finished with your pee? It’s Ratbag time.

Which just goes to show…that no matter where you are, cats kinda rule the world.

It’s 630 am here and I’ve still not seen a hair dryer, so forgive the luscious locks.

Please feel free to vote as to whether or not we try this or any other unusual Pringle. Something tells me chai would love them…

Words and pictures cannot begin to describe how incredible this day has been…but I’ll try! (There are photos, but have to wait to get them off a jump drive. I promise, coming soon! )

After a lovely morning in Auckland collecting snacks and sunscreen for the road, we headed down the gentle, rolling road to Waitomo to take The Black Abyss tour of the glow worm caves with Black Water Rafting company.

It began much as you expect it would- meeting our tour guides, putting on stinky wet suits and boots, strapping on helmet…then they took us to a hole in the middle of a farmers field. There they trained us on abseiling  (rappelling ) and general safety concerns. Then it was down the hole into the cavern. I could only look straight ahead and push off the stone in front of me because I knew I couldn’t look down. The adventure just kept coming. Zip line through the dark to a table in the cavern, that we had to jump 8 feet down into water holding on to a tube. That water was icy! 11 degrees C which I have been to lazy to convert to F, but I can tell you this – I was happy to have my stinky wetsuit. This tour was not for the feint of heart. We crawled through narrow passages, slid down a dam, interacted with some nosey eels, scrambled up the most ridiculous places to finally at the end…

Climb up through, yes, through two waterfalls. We’re talking water pouring down 25 foot chasm that we had to climb up and through to finish. We were both thankful for the climbing experience we had at the indoor rock gym, or we would have had an even more difficult time making it up. When we made it through, all we could think was, holy crap, did we just do that?

We are staying the night at the lovely cabins of Te Tiro. I can’t wait to show you guys this vast tumbling countryside with sprawling views. Incredible. And the host, Rachel, was so warm and showed us all their private accessible landmarks, including their very own glow worm grotto. I could write pages about this place.

For dinner, we went to a place called Huhu. It was recommended highly by both our guide and our host. It was one of the best meals we have ever had. In our top 10 restaurants ever. Kevin had a roasted duck leg butternut squash mashed potatoes and I had lamb curry with coconut rice. We finished it with their molten chocolate cake with lemon curd ice cream with raspberry coulis. Happy Valentines day to us!

We truly still can’t believe how amazing this day has been and can only imagine what lies ahead.

It’s currently 6:22 am here, 12:22 pm yesterday for folks back home. Wowsers. The hike yesterday was crazy, but great. No pics from it since my phone died. You’ll have to wait till I get my camera pics uploaded.

Rangitoto was a 25 minute calm ferry ride from the mainland. It looked for the world like you were pulling up to jurassic park, complete with some what I assume was Maori inspired gateway.  We casually strolled to the base of the various trails and picked the one that was the short route to the summit. Only 1 hour? Bah! That’s probably a 30 minute one for us! We were so wrong.

Old lava fields reflected the heat as we scrambled up the path. Our water bottle was soon emptied. There were lots of desert like plants everywhere, hard leaves and stems. We did make it to the top in an hour, but it was hard won with lots of stops in the few spots of shade.

The view from the top was incredible. Wide, panoramic views of the city, and other islands, and ocean dotted with white sails. Lovely. I’m glad we took pictures, because at the time, all I could think of was how hot and tired I was.

On the way up (and down) we passed a group standing around a lady who had turned her ankle quite badly. After asking if we could help, we headed on our way being even more cautious, since we had jelly legs and no wish to start our trip in a cast. About 2/3 the way down, we passed 2 people who had gone for help. All they had was a pillow, and a wooden wheel barrow with one wheel. Apparently that was the only other wheeled vehicle on the island and they were going to try to use it to get the lady down. We still don’t know how they got her down, but we did see several helicopters circling the top. Hope the got here before the last ferry left. …

Sorry for the wordy post this morning. Guess a photo really would have been worth the 1,000 words. Today we leave Auckland to go on the Black Abyss tour in the glow worm caves. Hope to get pictures! Til then.

After what felt like forever on the plane (3 movies, 2 meals, and 700 uncomfortable sleeping positions), we finally made it to sunny Auckland!

Surprising, we weren’t feeling too badly. So we nabbed our rental car and headed out to check out the city. After breakfast at the fanciest McDonald’s ever (they have real baristas), we struck out to check out what was going on in the quay.
Impressive red iron gates and beautiful ships in the harbor greeted us at the main ferry house where we picked up tickets to visit Rangitoto Island. Rangitoto island is a 600 year old dormant volcano with incredible rock formations and views. Or so we’ve read. We’re still waiting on the ferry. ..

Make us go something something

I’m glad I won’t be here for those 17 degree temps this weekend…

The hardest part of any time Kevin and I travel is leaving behind this face. Just look at it. How can you say no to that face?

Thankfully, Kevin’s parents will be taking care of Miss Chai. Grammers and Grampers can’t wait to have their little Fluffernutter for a whole 3 weeks. Chai is on a strict regimen of 2 walkies a day and the occasional BBQ Pringle. And heaven help you if the hiney scratches are not plentiful.

We’re also super thankful to our friend Edmond who will be house sitting for us and taking very special care of our cat Kaylie and my 3 fish tanks.