Rip, Raft and Rock 
We were tourists and gave $300 to be taken tubing down a cave system. We abseiled (repelled) 27 meters down into the limestone, river cave. Our guide took the 6 of us upstream, trudging through the water, using our head lamps, through various passages and for a look at the glowworms. We had hauled our tubes up the river a ways, so we tubed down the river. It was a bit short, but still fun. We went over a few foot tall waterfalls. After tubing down and squeezing through another passageway, we hauled our tubes back up river. At the end, we did an easy rock climb out the same area we came in. It was a good 3 hour workout.

The next morning, we shot off to Taupo, where we checked out the Huka Falls. This is a relatively short falls, but the neat thing about it, was the 100m river all of a sudden gets pushed into 15m wide, 10m deep rock channel. This makes it thrash like crazy and the falls apparently couple fill 6 olympic sized swimming pools within one minute. Afterwards, we went to New Zealand's Craters of the Moon. It was a bit less awe inspiring than the US National Park. It was basically a walkway around some steaming vents and a couple mud puddles.

The best find ended up being the Spa Thermal Park. It was a heated river emptying into a cooler, larger river. The hot river was probably just over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. You could sit in the stream, or just below the falls where it mixed, quite unevenly, with the cooler water. After that, we noticed the city park had a confidence course. It is basically everything the US considers dangerous. Everything is built of wood and metal. There are balance beams, monkey bars, and all sorts of other things. This one had a 300 foot long zip line type contraption. You sat on a T-bar and rode it down. It's too bad we don't really have stuff like this in the US. Joe and I were talking about how a full workout would be jogging to a place like this, doing the course, then jogging home. Lots of fun.

From there we drove to the Tongariro National Park (Mordor) to look for someplace to stay the night. We stumbled upon a DOC site, or maybe a national park campground. It was only $8, but it was packed! The tent area was just a parking lot with people in any spot they could be. The campervan area was also all occupied. There were even two people out by the pay box. We ended up parking behind one of them for the night.

-Miranda


Joe and I going through the cave. I'm in front.

Right after I came out of a hole.

A group photo with glowworms above us. (Click on photo to enlarge.)

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Cave Day! 
It rained all night last night and continued into the day. We just did cave tours, so it worked out well. The first one was pretty neat. They're all limestone caves so have a lot of very neat formations. They also have glowworms, which are apparently only found in a few places in the world.

The second one we did was a 'glowworm' cave. The cave had a super tall ceiling, but was relatively short in length. Unfortunately, they just grab whoever is ready to go (and has a ticket) every half hour, plus there were a number of tour buses. It was packed in there. Normally the boat is able to go through the cave, but due to the heavy rains, the cave was getting flooded, so the water was too high to go the normal way. We just went under the glowworms then turned around. It was kind of neat, but we saw a lot of glowworms in the previous cave, so just the sheer number of people made that cave more annoying.

The last cave, Aranui, was pretty neat. It was short, but there were lots of formations. Afterwards, we took a British couple to the cave along that bush walk we went to earlier. They both thought that was neat, though the girl was definitely freaked out by the cave wetas on the walls.

Our plan today is black water rafting, then we'll be back on the road again.

-Miranda


Cave formation.


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Cape Reinga 
We made it up to Cape Reinga by around lunch time. The cape is gorgeous. We walked up to the top for a view, then a little lower to the lighthouse. From there we headed to the nearest DOC site. It was a bit of a steep, gravel drive down to the spots, but it is a beautiful area. We relaxed for the afternoon, then headed out for a walk when the sun was a little lower. After our walk, we swam in the tidal river, which was just a little warmer than swimming in the ocean.
Making dinner has been interesting. We only have a single, small camp stove, so it's basically impossible to cook two things at once. He crammed everything into the saucepan to cook. It was good, but the bottom did get a little burnt since it was too full to stir.
The mosquitoes were terrible last night! I don't know how they were getting in, but they must have been somehow. We managed to sleep anyway.
-Miranda

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Campervan! 
We finally found a campervan! It comes with a bed in the back (with a real mattress, not an air mattress like some), kitchen stuff, cooler, chairs and a table along with some other odds and ends. So, our plan is to leave Auckland tomorrow and head north. Along with the sale we also got a mobile phone. So, that should be handy, especially once we have to try and sell it.

Tomorrow is my first day of driving on the left!

-Miranda



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Earthquake 
I just wanted to update the blog quick to let people know that we're in Auckland on the North Island, so we're nowhere near Christchurch where the earthquake happened. So, we're safe. The only effect we had here was the phones were out for a bit.

On that note, we haven't really been doing anything but working and going for short walks. We have decided to buy a van that is outfitted with a bed and some camping gear. After talking to numerous people in the hostel, that sounds like the best, and cheapest, way to go. So, that's our main goal right now.

-Miranda

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