A few days away

We had a great past few days driving around the North Island of New Zealand and again realized that it takes longer to drive places than it looks on the map.

We started on Wednesday by stopping in a very small town at my favorite place McDonalds (I will be posting an entry about more general McDonalds details in a little while). While Erin was in the bathroom, I was left to order and as I was placing our order I noticed out of the corner of my eye that this one lady was freakishly staring at me with a slightly psychotic smile on her face. When I finished the order, sure enough the first words out of her mouth were "Excuse me, but you're not from around here, I don't want to be rude, but where are you from." I told her and expected us to have a great conversation about NZ and all the great things to see in their wonderful country. Instead she just kind of smiled at me, said a few things under her breath while her friend talked to me without even looking at me. It was one of the stranger conversations I've ever had. These ladies were in their 60's and I believe that it was their big outing for the month to take a trip in the small town to go to McDonalds and the biggest surprise was that they saw an American.


We then checked out the zoo in Hamilton where we saw zebra's, giraffe's, cheetah's, spider monkey's, pigs, rhino's and more. Erin had a close encounter with one of the ostriches who was hoping that Erin had some food (unfortunatly for him, we follow zoo directions and no feeding). Bridal Veil Falls was the next stop on our list (not the falls in NH where Erin and I hiked with the rest of the wedding party at Jake/Katie's wedding). This was a 95 meter falls which was only a 10 minute hike off of the road.

We didn't have a very detailed map to get us to our next location, so we just followed signs and drove for 2 hours on an unpaved road through various mountains and only passed 3 cars the whole time. We happened across one of the most amazing places I've ever seen which was a harbour. Doesn't sound amazing as I write it now, but take my word for it, it was amazing. Walking down to the beach we sat in silence until our ears hurt because it was so quiet.

In Otorohanga we got some food and then looked for a place to stay, but there were only 2 hotels both with No Vacancy signs. Luckily we found a guy who mention about a Holiday Park. (For those who don't know a Holiday Park is like a campground, but "quite" nice). We were in cottage number 11 for the night which was perfect for what we needed and only $50. In the morning we had hot showers and then hit the road.

Waitomo Caves was our main destination on Thursday morning so we could go black water rafting and see Glow Worms. Bundled up in our wet suits, booties, and helmets we headed into the caves. We found out quickly that these glow worms were an amazing sight, but were actually maggot's and the glowing piece was their POOP. Regardless it was a great adventure and we enjoyed the time in the cave, in the water, jumping over waterfalls, etc.

Because of our problems finding a place to stay the previous night this was our number one priority when we arrive at our next destination (called Thames). We found a Bed & Breakfast called Grafton Cottage & Chalets. The son Josh and cat Tom greeted us and was very friendly and showed us to our cottage. It was a great place with beautiful views of the town and the Firth of Thames (which is the ocean). We were the only people staying there and I would stay the only people who had stayed there in a while as we noted 5 dead bee's and bugs throughout the cottage. Besides this, the place was great although a little more expensive than the Holiday Park.

Our plan for Friday was to do a long hike, but the weather forecast decided that we would do that another weekend. So Friday morning we took the more scenic Pacific Coast Highway (not really a highway) back up to Auckland.

A great few days overall and was nice to see some more of the countryside including more sheep and cows.