Welcome back for more New Zealand stories! We stayed at the Waitomo Orchard B&B, Waitomo being an area that is rather famous for it's many, many caves. The garden around the house we stayed at was just so cute, I had to take a few pictures.
After our Hobbiton day, we were very happy to turn in early. We were well rested for our next day which was full of absolutely awesome things!
First stop: a cave tour. We went with Down to Earth, because they offer a tour that is quite active and looked like a bit of a challenge. It was superb! Ashe, our guide, kitted us out with warm gear, galoshes, and hardhats. We were the only ones scheduled for this tour, so it ended up being a private tour.
Within a few minutes, we went from beautiful, hilly farm country like this:
To a fantastically magical canyon, like this:
It was so beautiful and green, it was other-worldly. We headed down to the bottom of the canyon to the river. Here the galoshes really come in handy as we walked through the river.
We spotted a couple river eels in the water, easily as big around as my wrist and at least a foot long. There was run off from the spring that was so clean we could drink it. And we did!
Then we got into the cave. There were a lot of unique formations: straws, cave bacon, and what looked like bowls of cauliflower rice.
We climbed and clambered, we got our boots full of river water, Lee almost got eaten by a cave dragon...
The grand finale: the glow worms. The longer you sit in the dark of the cave the more your eyes adjust, the more glow worms you see. It's like a starry night sky under the ground.
Glow worms are technically just bioluminescent maggots, but I think the PR team who decided that we should call them glow worms instead probably made the right call.
Exiting the cave, we headed back into the fantastic rainforest, but first one must get all the river water out of one's galoshes.
We finished up our visit with some cookies and chamomile tea to warm us up. I've already decided that if we get to visit New Zealand again, we'll be coming back here. Absolutely one of my most favorite things I've ever done.
We made our way to Otorohanga and stopped to get meat pies and fresh fruit ice cream for lunch.
After lunch we visited the Kiwi House, a small aviary and sanctuary for, you guessed it, Kiwi birds. Kiwis are nocturnal, so their little habitats are dark during the day and lit at night so the visitors have a chance of seeing them awake. You can't really photograph them--too dark and they're temperamental so not permitted anyway--but here's a taxidermy bird:
Here's some kiwi facts: They sleep 16-20 hours a day in their underground burrows. They're very territorial so you can't house more than two together. They fight with their feet and are quite aggressive. Kiwi have no natural predators, but the introduced mammals in New Zealand do attack and kill them. Their eggs are nearly the same size as an ostrich egg, but the birds are less than 2 feet tall. Female Kiwi somehow carry that egg around for months before laying it and male kiwi sit on the egg.
There were many other birds and reptiles that were fun to find. New Zealand has no native mammals, no native snakes, so birds and small lizards are pretty much it when it comes to native animals. There are some rather unique ones.
This pigeon was so fat, I thought it was the Godpigeon from The Goodfeathers on Animaniacs.
After we saw as many birds as we could, we started our drive back up to Auckland. We made time for a stop off in Hamilton though, which ended up being a real highlight.
We did a drive by of the Hamilton Temple, just stopped long enough to snap a few photos, then we headed to the botanical garden.
Our guide from the cave tour and the guy at the Kiwi house both recommended the gardens, and since we had some time we decided to stop by for an hour. I'm so glad we did! They're fantastic! And did I mention they're free?
Each garden was themed, some based on a specific location and time, others were more fantastical, and I loved them. We visited the Japanese garden first, which made us realized how cool this was going to be.
Then the Chinese garden, where a perfectly placed rainbow added to the magic.
There was also a fantastic Māori garden.
There were some more whimsical gardens:
The Indian Garden was fantastic, so symmetrical and elegant.
The Italian Renaissance Garden gets an A+ from me:
Right along side the gardens was the natural beauty of the river.
One of the fantasy gardens I thought might have been inspired by The Magic Flute, but we were getting close to closing time so we didn't take the time to read the signs.
We liked the Tudor garden, with it's little creatures perching on poles.
We managed to see most everything before closing time, though a few gardens were closed for renovation. I do hope to come back and visit someday and allow for a little more time. I'm glad we managed to fit it into our trip!
We left Hamilton and headed for Auckland under a beautiful sunset, munching on our road snacks. It was an excellent day; so excellent, in fact, it rivals Hobbiton for the best day of the trip.
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