NEW ZEALAND | Sunday, 8 February 2009 | Views [102]
On the road all day with Yui and Hidde from the hostel. Went to Waitomo caves several hours North East of Taupo. The caves are a stunning formation of passages and caverns that have been formed over thousands of years in the limestone rock in the Waitomo area. The guide highlighted various formations that looked like other things......as they always do on these types of tours…..although he did fail to mention the large phallic formation that dangled from one of the ceilings. Maybe it was because there were children present…or maybe it was just my schoolboy sense of humour!!!
The tour took us through the various winding passageways to an underground river system where our guide took us on a boat to look at the glowworms. I have never seen glowworms before, they looked amazing. Hundreds of green incandescent dots lighting up the top of the caverns like stars in the night sky. You get the picture.
I opted not to do some of the other activities in the caves such as black water rafting (rafting in the dark) and pot holing……mainly due to the fact that I wanted to make it Whakatane in good time.
Drove for several more hours and dropped my two road companions off in Rotoroa. It was a beautiful drive between Rotoroa and Whakatane driving though the mountains and past lakes.
The town Whakatane is a Maori name and you pronounce the Wh in as a F. I was told that a local radio station objected to calling the town using the Maori pronunciation. The Maori's answer to this is do the English speaking people object to the word country…..I thought it was a good argument
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