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
