Old face in a new place

Headed South to Hamilton, Raglan and Waitomo the weekend just gone. An old colleague of Amanda's had recently followed in our footsteps and emigrated to New Zealand. Well, I say followed in our footsteps, but she had actually started the ball rolling before we did - but having a family to organise and applying for residency meant they had only just arrived.

Hamilton is their new home, a land-locked city and it must be said a much derided town 90 minutes of motorway south of Auckland. Rather than meet them there however, we met at the nearby-ish town of Raglan - famous for it's left handed point break (the surfers will know what I mean!) and to a lesser extent boutique arts shops.

It was great for Amanda to catch up with an old friend, meanwhile it was a pleasure to meet her fella, Steve, and the kids. They've only been here 4 weeks, but loving it already. We know that feeling!

After lunch and a couple of coffees Amanda & I headed to Raglan beach itself for a stroll and to watch the surfers. The surf, was, thankfully nothing special - my feet still preventing me from suiting up. Looked a great place to surf though, long, long beach so even on a day where the surf is stonking I can imagine you get plenty of room and quite sheltered too, due to the ridge of hills that abut the beach.

The beach itself, however was another example of a wild west coast beach, complete with the now familiar black sand. As you can see from the photos it's probably more like grey sand, until it's disturbed and then it's much darker.

Here are some photos of a sundail type thing overlooking Raglan beach.

Sunday

Started the day with a Kiwi take on bubble and squeak - chorizo and beetroot added to the potatoes and lardons. Yum! Coffee was none too shabby either and my favourite, roast 'All-Press'.

Perfect fuel for the hours drive further South to Waitomo. There's no motorway's here so all single lane carriageways. Excellent driving it was too. Dipping, winding roads, bereft of traffic and flanked on either side by yet more gorgeous scenery. Really is hard to describe what a pleasure driving can be out here so I will have to try and get a good video up one day - of course that would have been easier had I not sold my GoPro before emigrating.

The said scenery was rolling hills covered in green pasture for the most part - all sprinkled with a generous helping of cows. A lot like some of the scenes of Hobbiton from LOTR; but with less hobbits (yep, another LOTR reference folks...). And with Spring in the air some roads were further beautified by rows of Cherry Blossom trees. We were even treated to the sight of some unidentified birds of prey hovering over the road - waiting to tuck in to a tasty morsel of roadkill on presumes.

But I digress, why were we heading South to Waitomo? To hand over some hard earned dollars to follow somebody into a hole in the ground. No, not Bilbo Baggins, or even Frodo for that matter, but Susan a guide at Waitomo Caves.

Not just any old cave though, no these caves are world famous; and by that, I do mean world famous, not just NZ world famous. For, in addition to some impressive stalactites and stalagmites the caves are also home to thousands of glow worms.

OK, quick nature lesson. Glowworms are in fact the larvae of the a two winged insect, much like the mosquito. They hatch form eggs laid in the darkest most humid parts of the caves and then spend around 9 months eating. To catch their food they dangle around 20 lines of stickyness with which they trap wayward insects before sucking them up to eat. The insects are attracted to the bio luminescent light given off by the glowworms. However, do wonder why they bother. The adults that emerge from the short pupa stage have no mouths and so only live for a couple of days before starving to death. Obviously just enough time to reproduce however, as they have been wowing the tourists for over a hundred years.

Was it touristy? Yes
Was it overpriced? Maybe - but not for us as we got over 50% off :0)
Was it worth it? Definitely!

The first cave was one of the smaller ones, but home to a large open area they call the Cathedral. Possibly named after the high ceilings and cave formations that look like an organ; but also perhaps because of the acoustics which are said to be amazing. So good in fact that several bands have performed there- there are no echoes.

A short tour this one, but ended with a (very short) boat ride through another part of the cave. This part was pitch black which enabled you to see the glow worms on the ceiling above - they did a good impression of the milky way; clever little worms.

The second cave, the RuaKuri cave was a lot larger with over 7km of pathways apparently - we only did a couple however. The tour started with a descent of over 20 meters via a large spiral staircase. Various rock formations were then pointed out as we ventured further into the cave; including the wonderful stalactites appropriately named as 'curtains'. There were more glowworms, doing their thang, but the highlight of this cave was probably the room they call 'the pretties'. I'll not try and describe the view - check out the phots!

Factoid:
Stalactites take 100 years to grow just one cubic centimetre.
Kinda puts a spanner in the works of the creationists!

We finished the tour by retracing our steps back to the surface; but not before catching a glimpse of some people in the middle of a blackwater rafting trip. Basically a combination of either scrambling or floating through through an adjacent set of caves on inner tubes. Looked like fun, but with Amanda not keen I may have to organise a work trip there...

Almost forgot to write about lunch. A mundane item of news that many may not feel worthy of words; but it was truly awesome and almost missed. Originally planning to eat at the Waitomo caves visitor center out of convenience we decided to chance the nearby Waitomo township instead. We were rewarded with fantastic service and a magical, yes magical, slow roast lamb with dauphinoise potatos and beetroot pureé. Thanks HuHu!

Finally, here's a video giving an intro to the caves...