Waitomo - Rotorua - Taupo

I forgot to say that when we went to Cape Reinga we climbed up this massive sand dune and then boarded down on our tummy on body boards. It was really great coming down but the climb up was really hard. Climbing up a huge dune off soft sand is not easy, the sand keeps on slipping back down under your feet and you feel like you are never going to make it to the top. But its worth it when you slide down.

The next day I went to Auckland and then to Waitomo to the glow worm caves. The lady in the hostel in Auckland said "go food shopping before you get to Waitomo because its a really small place". I thought she was just saying that compared to Auckland but she was right. You would drive through it without knowing you had missed it. However, its all going on under the ground. Saying that the first day I arrived I went on a horse trek into the hills and the country side was beautiful, there was a lot of aberdeen angus cattle and a lot of thistles, someone from Scotland must have been missing home when they moved to NZ. The problem is that thistles are weeds and because everything grows like mad here, now they are a problem. I had a lovely old horse called spider who knew where he was going and just plodded along while I looked at the beautiful scenery. I was a bit sore though when I got off and was walking like John Wayne for a few minutes until I got the feeling back in my knees.

On Friday I went to the caves. There are so many caves and so many ways to see them depending on how much discomfort you wish to endure. Of course, the younger people go for the option that involves climbing through waterfalls and black water rafting and other mad things that are advertised as maximum adrenalin. I went for the 100 m abseil into the Lost World and the 30 m ladder climb out. The Lost World is supposed to be the best of the caves and it is really beautiful. You abseil/rappel down through what is basically a big crack in the ground through overhanging trees and greenery past moss and stuff into a huge cave system which has a little stream running through it. Abseiling is really cool once you get off the platform but its that bit where the guide says now look down and you think oh no, I'd rather not. The whole area is all limestone and riddled with caves (this is where the set for hobbiton was in Lord of the Rings), in some places the caves have collapsed and there are holes in the ground that mostly the farmers have fenced off to stop the cattle disappearing down them. At the bottom of the abseil, we (me and the guide Anne) walked into the cave. Well, I say walked but this involved a lot of climbing over rocks, looking at fossils in the rocks and stalactites and stalagmite. It gets darker and darker and eventually you cannot see daylight any more and you need to switch on the light on your helmet. Anne took me into a little cave where I switched off my light and looked up and screamed in delight, the ceiling was just covered with glow worms all shining away like stars in the sky. Glow worms are horrible little things when you see them in daylight, nasty little brown worms but in the dark they are awesome. Once they hatch into flying insects, they cannot eat or drink and only live three days which hopefully is long enough for them to make baby glow worms.

Next day I left for Rotorua. Its a bit smelly there as its a volcanic area and there is sulphur seeping up through the foundations between the cracks in the pavements. They keep on having to repair the buildings because the sulphur eats away at the cement. I went to the thermal park at Wai O Tapu to see the geyser and the bubbling mud pools. It sounds really boring but they have a really great walkway laid out and a brochure that tells you what you are looking at. The pools are all different colours depending on the minerals that are coming up through the ground, its really interesting. They can make the Lady Knox geyser go off at 10:15 each day by dropping a bar of soap into it. The soap breaks the tension between a hot chamber and a cold chamber and makes the geyser erupt. The bus driver was so interesting, he was an old guy who had been in Rotorua since 1950 when he came back from the war and he knew everyone and everything about the place. He used to drive a logging truck and he took me through the forestry commission park and told me all about the trees. While I was in Rotorua, I managed to make contact with Jill and Roger who are on a two week whirlwind tour of New Zealand. We arranged to meet up in Taupo for dinner so I quickly checked out of Rotorua and made off for Taupo. The driver to Taupo was a bit of an amateur geologist who told me all about the volcanic activity in the area and how we were on the edge of the same Pacific plate which causes the earthquakes in San Francisco. I meet Jill and Roger and Roger's friend Anthony who lives in Auckland. Roger and Anthony were going golfing the next morning so I dragged poor Jill off on a five hour walk to see the Aratiatia Rapids. We arrived at 10am just as they were opening the dam and waited till they closed it again at 10:30, it was incredible to see how quickly the water level went down again when they closed the dam. it must have been about 8 feet in about 7 minutes. It was really great to see Roger and Jill and have dinner with them, it really reminded me of home.

On Wednesday I walked the Tongariro crossing which is a 17km walk up a volcano. Its a hard climb up but once you are there, the views are excellent, it is supposed to be the best one day walk in New Zealand. They are really seriously into some heavy duty walking here. This one starts at 1150m, climbs to 1886m and then descends to 700m. The bus picks you up from the hostel at 5:40am (see what did I say about the early morning thing?) and drives you to the start of the walk for 7am so that you can do the hard climbing part before it gets too hot. The last bus home is at 4:30pm from the other end of the walk and although I was fairly confident I could finish the walk, I was worried about how long it would take me, so I timed myself all the way along, tried to keep going as much as possible and had short stops (the longest with 15mins two hours from the end). I was really pleased with myself when I finished at 3pm, in time to catch the early bus (yippee). Here are my times at the various points of interest:
Start 7:25
Soda Springs 8:40 (this part looks a lot like walking anywhere in Scotland, there is heather on the ground and a bubbling brook)
The next part is a hard climb over boulders called the Devils Staircase. its longer than the Devils Staircase at the end of Rannoch Moor but I'm not sure if its as hard as I expected it to be. It took me 60 mins and the guide book says 45 mins.
South Crater 9:37. This part you walk across the inside of a volcano crater, its very flat and really weird.
The next part is another hard climb up to the Red Crater, this time it is quite sandy (black volcanic ash) underfoot and quite hard to get a foothold. Top of Red Crater 10:28.
After this you go down to the Emerald Lakes, sounds easy but you are going down this soft soft again and its really hard to keep your foothold. Emerald Lakes 11:17.
After this it is just a long winding walk downhill with spectacular views all the way. There is a hut halfway to the bottom and once I got there I knew I would be finished by 3pm because I got there at 12:50 and left at 1:04 and it was 2 hours to the end. Near the end there were men repairing the path and it was really funny because they had a mini bulldozer and cement and stuff all the way up this bloody mountain. God knows how they got them there.

Today (Thursday) I did my first skydive. It was the best thing ever, ever, ever. Sure I've said that before but I don't think anything can top this. I decided to go for the 15,000 feet option as the guidebook said if you are going to do it, go as high as you can and the woman (really good sales woman at the counter) said for the first few seconds you will have sensory overload anyway and not be able to take in what is going on because basically you have just jumped out of a moving plane and you are plummeting to the earth. So with the 15,000 feet option you have 60 seconds freefall as opposed to 45 seconds with the 12,000 feet option. So you jump strapped onto someone who knows what they are doing and all you have to do is not wet yourself. There were eight people in this tiny plane. No seats, we sit on the floor of the plane. You sit between your instructors legs and he attaches your harness to him. Ok so I've been in a small plane before this part was ok. It started to get a bit scary when they opened the door for the other people to jump out, they had elected to go for 12,000 so they got out before me. Now when they open the door and the wind is rushing past it seems like insanity for people to be jumping out of a moving plane. So that was a bit scary but my instructor was really good and reassured me that I was strapped to him securely and everything would be fine. One thing I need to say here is that all the people who are guides or instructors seem really young for the amount of responsibility they have and they handle it sooooo well. They are polite but very professional, they reassure you and make you feel comfortable and even though they have done it thousands of times before, they still want to make it really fun for your first time and for you to have a blast and really really enjoy it. Its just amazing. Like one of the people who jumped with me today said, the whole country is just willing you to try things you would never do at home and they are so enthusiatic about you doing it and enjoying it.

So I am strapped to Volker (a young attractive German guy) and after he has reassured me that I am tightly strapped onto him and he will look after me, we head for the door. At the door you need to put your head back and curl your legs back under the plane and then he jumps and you do too. The woman was right for the first few seconds you don't see anything and then it doesn't feel like you are falling, the air is pushing against you so hard and the ground seems so far away that you feel like you are just suspended there in mid air. The views are stunning, we were over Lake Taupo a beautiful blue/green lake bigger than Singapore. After what seems like a really short time, Volker opens the parachute and does a slow turn towards the land. This part is like being on a massive fairground ride and he asks me if I want to turn faster, of course I say yes please and we do with me screaming. Volker does the landing and all I have to do is pull my feet up to avoid hitting the ground. I think I am addicted. Later in the hostel, I met a lady from Isreal who has done it three times now. Everyone at that hostel just talks about skydiving and the Tongariro crossing, those are the two must do things in Taupo. Taupo itself is really beautiful (apparently its even more busy during the skiing season) and the hostel (Rainbow Lodge) is one of the best I have been in