27/06/2010 Trip to Waitaimo.

So these entries have been written on my laptop and then copied over on my USB key because the Rotorua YHA charges by the minute, so it was way cheaper that way.


27/06/2010 Trip to Waitaimo.
I woke up early to catch a bus leaving at 0735 and to spend a bit of time rearranging the contents of my three food bags. They were in a minimum volume configuration but this meant that there was very little logical order to what was where and I wanted to have one bag with perishable stuff like cheese and another with lunch and snacks that could go in my daypack. We moved between nice sun and torrential downpour several times but I admired the brilliant greens of the grass on the rolling hills of the North Island. Very different scenery to the brown scrub or thick bush of the south. When we arrived I spent some time wandering around the i-site (the tourism info place throughout NZ, they will even book buses and trips for you without charging anything) reading the brochures. Waitaimo’s big draw is the limestone it sits on, or more specifically, the swiss cheese water has made of that limestone. The region has over 300 known and mapped caves of which 10-20 are commercially open to the public. I started off with going on two trips that could be covered in the afternoon, these were the really simple and safe ones, tiled floors and electric lighting. Kind of silly, and if I had thought things through a bit more I would probably have avoided them or gone for one of them in the morning I left. One of them had glow worms as it’s main draw, they were neat when we turned out the lights it was like looking at a bunch of green stars. Apparently the poo glows and attracts flying insects which are then caught in the sticky threads that hand from the worm. The worm itself isn’t really a worm but a larva of a creature that, when it matures, lives for only 4 days before dying to starvation because of a lack of a mouth.

The other one focussed more on just the cave formations. We weren't allowed to take photos in either for some reason (likely commercial). I call this method of charging for every little bit of extra on your trip, like photos, t-shirts etc "adventure capitalism."

When I got back to the i site to book my trips for the next day I learned that someone else wanted to book a trip that I had been unable to book earlier because I had been the only one at the time. However 2 was the min number, so I booked the next day on the 7 hour "lost world epic" which sounded fun, and was actually the best value for time underground, especially after you included the lunch and dinner they fed you.

So that will be my next blog post, maybe in the next 12hrs if the Taupo YHA has power for my laptop, maybe later.

26/06/2010: Trip to Auckland

Hi folks, so after a long absence of not bloging, various folks have been bugging be about it and without the ability to easily upload photos due to variable connectivity to "teh intrawebz" I'm sticking to good old text.

Exams finished Thursday the 24th of June and now I'm touring the North Island for about 2 weeks. I've been to Waitaimo Caves and am currently in Rotorua with Taupo coming up this evening, Wellington on the 3rd and the northern tip of the island on the 7th I think. I've been taking notes at the end of each day on my little notebook and will try to find time to upload them as I move around.

26/06/2010: Trip to Auckland

I woke up at 1900hrs to do my sheets and vacume before heading out to take some photos of campus before leaving as requested by dad. My flight left at 1335, but I got there much earlier than the recommended hour before flight to make sure that my 3 bags were going to get on the plane. It turns out that ChCh airport has moved over to an almost entirely automated ticketing program with real people reserved for those with premium tickets. So I resigned myself to having to pay for the 2 extra bags despite the possibility of an amnesty on the bag because of my earlier ticket. But then their credit card reader refused to take my card (something to do with it having a chip in it rather than just the magnetic swipe) so I ended up talking to the premium people anyways and managed to get in with just one extra bag.
The airport itself was small but nice, they had an open air viewing deck where I could watch the planes take off in the drizzle before going through security. As I was in line (not much of a line though, only 2 people) I realised that I had forgotten to put my “dangerous” ditty bag in my stowage and had it in my carryon. It has such heinous items as toothpaste, shampoo, nail clippers and then there is the swis army knife. Now despite the fact that I think a full 1L nalgene water bottle could be just as dangerous as the finger length blade, that is clearly prohibited. So I was understandably a bit worried that they would confiscate my hijacking tool. However I just walked straight through and after a short moment of held breath, my bag rolled off the x-ray line just fine. So clearly they take things a bit less seriously in NZ. However I won’t be trying that again on the international leg! The flight over the Auckland was nice, though cloudy. We could occasionally see snow capped mountains and at the beginning could see the sunrise further west.

Coming into Auckland I was feeling tired and hungry and was feeling a bit culture shocked. Which was strange, because Auckland is quite similar to Vancouver in population, but after the very low population of the South Island and having a hostel in the middle of down town with 10 floors, the number of people around felt a bit oppressive. I spent a bit of time wandering around before the sun set and then went in to eat a quick dinner and get ready to go to bead.