Ro-tor-u-a and Wai-to-mo
Well, after realizing that we needed to see more of the North Island, the ladies and I headed to two popular destinations: Rotorua and Waitomo. We rented a car and left first thing Saturday morning for Rotorua. The drive was pleasant and it felt GREAT to get out of the city. Rotorua is the site of a lot of volcanic activity, and we went straight to the natural mud baths. First we stopped at the "foot pool" where we rolled up our jeans and plopped our feet into amazingly warm water with gushy grey mud at the bottom. Anya is showing off a big glob of it in the picture on the left.

Once we put our shoes back on, we walked around the park and saw all kinds of bubbling sulphuric pools and gurgling, splattering mud. One of the coolest things we saw was a hot waterfall. The water in it is nearly boiling and it used to be used for the cleansing of wounds for Maori warriors after battle. You can see the steam rising up from the rocks in the picture.

After all of the walking, we finally got ready to take our mud bath and spa treatment. We got the "family size" mud bath so we could all play in it together. The mud bath itself was not thick (as I guess I expected it to be). The mud sits on the bottom, and the rest is just hot water on top. Arguably a bit disappointing, but it still felt great. All that mud of course led to some shenanigans which made up for our high expectations.

After the mud bath, we sat in a natural, outdoor spa pool. Unfortunately there is so much sulphur in it, that even after washing my clothes and my body, I swear I can still smell it! It was an odd experience, but we managed to have a great time.

Also, in the parking lot of the place, there was a herd(?) of peacocks. They were so beautiful and new that Anya wanted to feed them. So we played with them for a little bit until they got a bit hostile and then we ran away.

After our walking and spa-ing, we went into the town of Rotorua where we had an amazing lunch at this little cafe. I had a great Panini sandwich with grilled Chicken and Camenbert cheese...yummmy. We then did a little bit of shopping in the town at cute boutiques before we had to get in the car and head to our next destination.

After two hours of driving (and a gorgeous sunset!), we arrived in Waitomo. This is the site of famous caves that are known for their glown worms. We stayed at the local hostel and enjoyed a packed dinner consisting of peanut butter and jelly and a bottle of red wine.

We then went out to the only place open in the little town. It was a log cabin style bar playing a rugby game on TV with a number of people drinking beers and relaxing. We spotted the jukebox and decided to make the place come alive. We dropped in a bunch of money, and using our combined DJing skills, got people dancing and singing. After a couple of hours there, we decided we needed to go to bed to prepare for our big day.

The next morning we got up and went to the adventure center we had booked a 4 hour caving trip called: Tumu Tumu Toobing. Unfortunatelty, we were not allowed to bring our cameras so you will have to rely upon my description. After meeting our guides Duane and Sheldon, we set out in a pink asian kindergarten bus (no joke, the thing had hello kitty and rainbows painted all over it). We took this smashing vehicle up a windy dirt road through pastures, hills, and many many sheep. We arrived at a large storage unit where we changed into full body wet suits, booties and rubber golashes. They then outfitted us with red helmets with headlamps on them. Once our group of about 10 people were dressed we looked like a bizarre version of Divo: "Whip it, whip it good!"

We then walked through the pastures with great difficulty (this was some seriously thick, heavy neoprene!) while passing sheep that kept running away from us! Then we came to a whole in the ground where we were told to climb down the ladder into the caves. Once inside we switched on our headlamps and looked at all kinds of stalagtites and stalagmites. The guides were really informative and a lot of fun. They kept steering us in the wrong direction and trying to scare us (fun in retrospect, of course). We trudged through the caves, crawled through narrow passages, swam through freezing cold water, and ultimately had a great time. The tubing part occured in two sections along the trip where we linked together in tubes (I think I've neglected to mention that there's an underground river in the caves) and sang songs while we floated along looking up at the glow worms. The scariest part was a section of the cave that they have named "the rebirthing canal." The name is quite fitting given that you crawl on your hands and knees through a narrow opening (barely big enough to move through) head first for about 25 feet. Did I mention we weren't allowed to have our head lamps on for this part? Despite a bit of claustrophobia at that moment, it worked out alright and we ended by floating through some rapids in our floating, rubber suits. When we finally saw the light of day, we were ready for some hot showers, food, and the drive back to Auckland.