In the morning, we do the "Black Abyss" Waitomo Caves tour run by the "Legendary Black Water Rafting Company". This is lots of fun, and includes an abseil, flying fox by the light of glow-worms, floating and trudging through rather cold water, climbing waterfalls and lots of glow-worms (very cool).
On the way to Rotorua, we stop at Te Kuiti to take a look at the Big Shearer: Te Kuiti is the shearing capital of New Zealand.
We say goodbye to Pauline and Len, and spend a good 6 hours driving south, through Auckland towards Te Kuiti, including a stop off at the Kiwi House in Otorohanga: this has an excellent Kiwi exhibition, including two Kiwis in a "night house" which is "dark" during daytime.
In Te Kuiti we meet up with Bill's cousin Kate and her husband John and have dinner at their farm just out of Te Kuiti. Their house is undergoing serious renovations so we stay at a motel in Te Kuiti.
Kate arranges for us to do a tour of the Waitomo caves tomorrow, including a significant discount.
The forecast was very ordinary, so we decided to forgo booking a boat trip around the Bay of Islands, and instead headed out with Bill's Aunt Pauline and Len to their beach house in Wellington Bay (on the east coast, 30 minutes from Whangarei).
Len and Pauline take us on a "Tiki Tour" of the bays in the area, and Pauline joins us in a brisk walk down to Whale Bay, which is quite pretty.
We farewell Jo and Tony, and head north.
Firstly, we visit the Kauri Museum in Matakohe, which has amongst other things:
Then we went to the Waipoua Forest, and walked to the Four Sisters, Te Matua Ngahere (The Father of the Forests: over 5 metres in diameter and could be over 2000 years old) and Tane Mahuta (God of the Forests: the largest tree in NZ, and approx 1200-2000 years and 51 metres tall).
Then we went to Trounson Kauri Park on the way to Whangarei. It had a loop-walk which if anything was more spectacular than the Waipoua Forest walks in terms of sheer number of large Kauri trees.
Had a good steak dinner in Dargaville, and found Len and Pauline's house in Whangarei.
We catch the ferry from Devonport to Waiheke Island, taking our bikes and a packed lunch with us.
Like the rest of New Zezland, Waiheke Island is quite hilly, but not particularly large, so we cycled from west to east end in a few hours. Their are some pretty cool views along the way (including Palm Beach and Onetangi Bay).
Eventually we make it to Stony Batter on the east coast. In the Second World War several large guns were placed on the eastern edge of Waiheke Island, making Stony Batter. We did a short self-guided tour through some of the tunnels, before making our way back to the west coast, missing the desired return ferry by about 3 minutes. So we consoled ourselves with some hot chips before catching the later ferry.
Also a photo of Jess (Jo's daughter).
We decide to head over to Piha, on the west coast, in the Waitakere Regional Park, but just before reaching the Auckland Harbour Bridge notice that it is jam-packed with cars, so we decide to go north (and west) to Muriwai Gannet Colony.
The Gannet Colony is pretty cool, and I took lots of photos of birds taking avantage of the wind.
[putting links in is taking too long, hopefully we'll fix it up later]
On the way back to Auckland, we went along the Scenic Road through Waitakere Regional Park. Lots of good views.
On our return from Auckland, uncle Jack came over, as well as Tony's mother Ila (sp?). Photos of John (Jo's son), and a bumble-bee.
Catch the ferry with Jo to Auckland.
Walk to Auckland Museum, catching some sculptures on the way.
Auckland Museum is pretty good, having a reasonly organised collection of Maori artifacts. The highlight of the Auckland Museum was the Volcano exhibition, which included a (literally) room-shaking multimedia Volcano simulation (like an earthquake machine, but better).
Next we wandered over to Sky Tower. The view was pretty good, despite being a rather grey day. Many people had trouble walking on the transparent flooring (including in the lift).
Bill was tempted to do the Sky Jump, but piked.
This here is going to be some notes of our trip to NZ, hopefully linking to photos.
Drive from home to Sydney airport was smooth and uneventful.
Note to self: don't return car with half a tank of petrol. They (Hertz) charge an extra dollar per litre of petrol. Ouch.
Flight from Sydney to Auckland is similarly uneventful.
Tony (husband of Jo [Bill's cousin]) picks us up from the airport. Despite not knowing what we look like he finds us because (apparently) Bill looks very similar to Jo's brother Patrick. On the way to their house in Devonport, Tony helpfully points out a useful bikeshop and the original Clarke house in Albert Rd.
