Overnight we had crossed the international dateline – meaning that the 16th of February lasted all of four hours. Unfortunately my camera didn’t know this – so with all likelihood dates will be confused at some point!
We arrived so early at Auckland airport that there was no gate available, meaning we were sat on the tarmac for almost half an hour. However we got through immigration without issue and at around 8am Laura called Jucy Car Rental who sent a van to collect us and take us to the car depot.
We filled in the paperwork and at Laura’s suggestion I was given a demonstration of how an automatic works! We were on the road just after 9am and the car felt great – even though it was ‘El Cheapo’, it was a much comfier ride than our car at home.
We were headed for Waitomo, but stopped for brunch at 10:30am in Hamilton. We went to Scotts’ Epicurean where I had a tasty Croque Monsieur and Laura had crumpets with strawberry compote, honey and ricotta. Both were great and it felt strange to be back in a bustling town. The coffee was also fantastic – but it turns out this is the case all over New Zealand and Australia!
A wakeboarding competition happened to be in progress on the river near where we had left the car, so we wandered down and watched the likes of Angel Wing (?) competing with some pretty funky stunts. There were also signs for a bikini competition, but sadly we couldn’t linger as we had glow worms to see!
We drove on to Waitomo and arrived just in time to a tour. The caves were fairly sizeable and the guide spent a long time talking about names given to each rocky outcrop – shining her torch at a pile of rubble, “This is called the Elephant”. Any collection of three holes or lumps was praised for it’s ‘uncanny’ resemblance to a face… But the caves themselves and the stalactites and stalagmites were impressive, and were well lit to allow the glow worms to be easily displayed.
One shelf was at eye level allowing you to see the thousands of glowing specks on the rock and the sticky strand they lower down to which they were attempting to lure their prey.
We were then placed in a boat and silently pushed through the cave, gazing at the millions of dots of lights that you couldn’t help but compare to a starry sky.
With plenty of time left in the day and me feeling wide awake and happy to drive, we decided to press on to Taupo where we tried a couple of fully occupied backpacker hostels before ending up at Burke’s Backpackers. The accommodation was very shabby and – with no lock on the door to the bathroom shared with another room – fairly insecure.
We did not have any plans for Taupo, so headed to the recommended Huka Falls and took a short walk over the blue green rapids and to the falls themselves.
We then drove back into town to Lake Taupo and sat on the shore while we tried to find something that we really wanted to see. We settled on the Craters of the Moon geothermal area, but luckily Laura spied it through a gap in the trees and we stopped ourselves before we had to pay – with Rotorua to see the following day, there seemed little point in seeing a merely adequate set of thermal springs!
With that we drove back into town and went to an internet cafe for over 2 hours to upload some pictures and send some messages home. Food seemed to be very expensive in the town, and as we were tired and hardly ravenous, we decided to stop in Burger King. We left so stuffed full and so tired that we almost felt drunk as we staggered our way back to the car and the hostel.
We collapsed into bed at around 10:30pm.
