TO begin with, I went out clubbing for the first time. I substituted Boysenberry Nip for Manachevitz and had a fine time. One of the kiwis that I danced with made my night by randomly bringing up Old Crow Medicine Show and being able to sing his drunken way through a song. Also during this clubbing venture, I found out that kiwis prefer German accents over any other, that Party in the USA is not just restricted to USA parties, and that there are such things as clubs made to look like you are under the root system of a tree. I do not think my dance partner at the time appreciated such musings such as why the roots had no mycorrhiza and that the surface area to volume ratio of the roots were foolish. I didn’t much like him anyways.
We left Wellington the next afternoon and embarked upon an 8 hour drive that was suppose to take 6. We stopped for PB&J dinner in a motel parking lot and learned that Kiwis can be touchy about private property. Our Hostel was quite nice and included a very friendly (especially if you had food) cat and dog. We woke up early the next morning and visited Waitomo Caves. Our visit included rappelling 27 meters into the cave and rock climbing out which was great fun. My favorite part was the glowworms of the cave. They are the larva stage of a fly that use bio-luminescence and sticky 'fishing lines' to catch flies. They looked like little blue stars and with the lights off (and a tube slapped against the water to scare our eyes into adjusting faster to the dark) outdid any night sky I have seen.
The biologist within me was very pleased and pissed. Pleased because of the beautiful bioluminescence of the gloworms in the cave but pissed because I rubbed clay of unidentified composition all over my face (a cave facial if you will) and then ingested an unidentified species of fern (albiet at our guides recommendation).
In order to relieve our sore muscles, the next morning we drove through Rotarura and visited some hot springs. While they were not as amazing as we had hoped it to be, it still got the job done and we went on to Hells Gate...another Geothermal area. Hells Gate was very impressive and very, very stinky. That's what happens when you have enough sulfur spewing out of the ground to make Yellowstone jealous.
The final stop of a very busy day was our Maori Cultural Experience. At the Maori event I ate some Kumara (a native veggie almost like a sweet potato), enjoyed some lamb and ate other interesting and novel foods. The Maori show after the meal was extremely entertaining but compromised a bit of education and seriousness to be more touristy.
On Sunday we started back to Wellington but with a long chunk of time spent kayaking the Whanganui River. Everything went smoothly until the very end.
We finished the paddle so quickly that there was 45 minute downtime as we waited to be picked up. The females were satisfied with sleeping/sunbathing on the cement boat ramp but the males had to go and show off their Y chromosomes. Two of these said Y chromosomes decided to kayak down the next set of rapids only to discover that they couldn't get back up them. In the process of walking them back up the river one of them got swept back downstream and for a while we were all very very worried. But we did all survive and tomorrow is a new day afterall.We continued onto Wellington with only a slight hiccup from somebody (not me, definitely not me, oh no, not me) leaving their purse in a Subway and not realizing it for 30 km. What a busy busy weekend.
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