New Zealand: week 13- September 4-10

Friday, September 4
I was invited to Shabbat dinner with the couple from a couple of weeks ago. Ari and another girl from that same dinner was there, but there were two new faces. Dinner was great as was the company.


Saturday, September 5
I had work in the evening…it got pretty busy for a bit. I once again missed the bus even though I was on time…my bus to work was 10 minutes late arriving, and I'm guessing at least 10 minutes early as I was leaving which sucks because that means I had to wait an hour for the next one. Bummer.

Sunday, September 6
Last day of work. It was a bit sad because as I've mentioned before I enjoyed myself there and got along with my coworkers really well. After work, I met Ari and we went out to Mt Eden and grabbed a bite to eat. I came home and tried to get my plans together…tomorrow I start my travels. I am once again unprepared. Oops.


Monday, September 7
I needed to be up at and the train station by 5:30am to be at my pick up point by 7:00am. Early start! We had some electrical issues with our bus so we traded our bus in for another which made us about an hour late leaving Auckland. We had a PPT (Pie, Pee, Tea) break an hour into our drive and stopped again a little while later at a waterfall. It's been raining a lot so there was a mighty strong fall happening. The driver was nice. I decided to do a half day boat tour tomorrow before heading back to Auckland. We've also been warned that if we think it's cold now, we are in for a shock once we start heading south. Uh-oh. We got to Piahia around 1:30-2, checked into Pipi Patch Hostel, and I went out for a walk around the shore. I called myself going to walk to a waterfall, but it ended up being a bit too far and started to rain. I end up going back towards the hostel and hit up the grocery store to snack by the beach since dinner wasn't any time soon. I went back and took a nap, naturally. Mind you, I'm still sickish. Finally it was time for the BBQ (steak, sausage, salad, coleslaw, baked potato, and bread as well as one free beer or wine). I ate with a guy from Spain and a girl from Italy. They both have me convinced maybe to give raki a try. I called it a night and I can't tell you how happy I was to have ear plugs! The boys in my room were in and out and drinking so being quiet was not their mindset.

Meet Doug :)
 

Tuesday, September 8
Another semi-early morning. I started talking to the two girls that were in my room that are also doing the same tour as me. We set off to do a cruise around the Bay of Islands out to the Hole in the Rock. Beautiful scenery, and a nice, cool day. We got to see dolphins and seals. It was rather exciting to see dolphins like that. If it hadn't been cold (weather and water) and juvenile dolphins, we could've swam with them (it's against the law to swim with juvenile dolphins, by the way). I was taking pictures with Doug and put him in my pocket. When I went to pull Doug out of my pocket, he flew into the water. Kiwis can't fly, but that one did :( Now I'm on a mission to find another one just like it. We got to leave for Auckland a little earlier than we were scheduled because only four of us were going back today. I'm already thinking "oh, man, I'm so glad to be going home!" I need some Milo and comforts of my bed. Can they just go with me? Lol I went in every souvenir shop I saw and none were like Doug…and they were a bit more pricey…and made noise. No, thanks. I got home in time to see all the family including the in-laws. I repacked my bag and hopefully my bag will be better this next go.

RIP Doug...

Hole in the Rock

Wednesday, September 9
I needed to be at the meeting point in Auckland by 8:30 which meant being at the train station by 7. We started our day by getting to know our driver a little bit. We then headed to Thames where we hit up a Pak n Sav (and I tried to find a new Doug, no luck). After that hour break, we made our way to Cathedral Cove. The trail leading to it is about a 40 minute walk each way…it wasn't really that hard, but it wore me out. I brought out Eric, Doug's older brother, and took some pictures (which you will enjoy below). Our over-night accommodation was close by in a place called Hot Water Beach (TOP 10). This is one of the coolest places I've seen. There are little single room huts, that is literally just a bed and a small fridge. Then there are family huts with bunk beds and maybe a bathroom? I didn't peek in that hard. Then there was my hut…it was two separate rooms with 3 bunks and one of those bottom bunks was a double. In between the rooms was a bathroom and a small kitchen type area. There was a bigger kitchen area and then another bigger kitchen with a lounge, laundry, and picnic area. There was also a play area including this cool bouncy thing. I'd totally love to stay here or somewhere like it again. They had a fish and chips stand and it was so cheap that I had to get some even though I had food with me. I sat around and chatted with the other people from my bus today. There will probably be differently people most days I think, but these guys seemed pretty cool. So, Hot Water Beach…during low-tide, you can dig a hole in the sand and super hot water is underneath. I'm talking EXTREMELY hot, so you have to make sure some of the cold sea water mixes with it. It is no warmer than 40-50 degrees here, yet here we are in the middle of the night (low-tide wasn't until around 9pm), making our way to the beach bundled up in our coats and bathing suits underneath. During our short trek, I noticed something glowing on the rocks. GLOW WORMS!!!! I started freaking out excitedly and everybody turned off their flashlights. It was so cool and makes me excited for my glow worm adventure tomorrow. We made it to the beach and started trying to dig around. No hot water. Finally someone said we should try behind this certain rock, so we did and there was a group of 4 people sitting in a pool of steaming water they had dug. I couldn't believe how crazy they were to actually be sitting in the water like that with it being as cold as it is. I started trying to dig around and it was bothering me to have my pants get messy so I took them off…then my hoodie…then I plopped down in the water and I kid you not it was just like being in a hot tub. It would sometimes get REALLY hot if you kept digging your toes around, which I did and it would become quite unbearable. There we were…about 25-30 of us in complete darkness digging around for hot water using our phones for light. I wish I had brought my phone with me so I could've taken pictures, but phones+night time+beaches do not bring back good memories for me (my previous phone was stolen at night at the beach during Birthright and it was RIGHT next to me). Me and two others followed these two girls that gave us a ride back to our place. It would've been miserable walking so I'm glad for the ride. I am glad I didn't chicken out and not get in the water. I considered not going at all, but what a silly thing that would've been. I didn't even bring my bathing suit with me because I knew I wasn't going to get in any water…thankfully one of the girl's had an extra one they let me borrow. Good night :)

Meet Eric

I thought it would be cute to draw in the sand and lay next to it while taking a picture...

Almost got drenched by cold sea water.

Thursday, September 10
Good thing that our main activities would be underground exploring the caves, seeing glow worms, and for some spending time in some cold water tubing and climbing through the caves. Because it rained we didn’t make a stop to see something…I don't remember/know what it was supposed to be. While most chose to do the more adventurous package in Waitomo, I chose to do a two hour walking tour through the Ruakuri Cave. The one thing I really wanted to do while in New Zealand was go see the glow worms like I've seen from pictures on Pinterest. If that's all I ended up doing then I would've left New Zealand feeling like I accomplished what I wanted to do. This was not the case. The tour I chose had about as many glow worms on the walls as there were on our walk to the beach last night. If I'd known that, I would've saved my $57 or would've done a different tour. I am completely gutted with the minimal amount of glow worms I saw. However, let me say this…I did enjoy the tour. The cave was awesome and the tour guide was informative, funny, and every other good thing you can say about really good tour guides. But I would've spent my money else where. Sorry for being such a Debbie Downer, but I'm just disappointed. That's what I get for not really researching before my trip to know exactly everything…let's be real though, I haven't learned my lesson and will probably make this mistake again. Still got a nice experience out of it. And Eric was able to be photographed in the caves whereas no cameras were allowed on any of the other tours. So that's a plus I suppose :)

New Zealand's famous lemon drink...(it's okay)

Our driver.

The spiral decent into the cave (not glow worms)

VIDEOS:

I will add videos later...It's going to take a while to upload and it's a bit difficult to do since I'm trying to be social and I don't want to buy wifi. ;)