Caves, Coastlines, and Christmas

Shadie and I still had a week in New Zealand after my folks left us following a fun 3+ week visit from them. The main event in this final week in the country was to be a three-day canoe trek down the Whanganui River, something neither of us has ever done before! Before that, however, we had a few other activities planned along the way to the canoe put-in.

The first stop was at another Lord of the Rings based attraction: Hobbiton. Peter Jackson and his team built an elaborate life-sized (or...well, hobbit-sized1) set for the hobbit's home on a working sheep farm in the New Zealand countryside. The set was bolstered with more permanent materials and turned into a long-running (and presumably lucrative) tourist attraction when The Hobbit films were made. I was a little reluctant to visit something so extremely "touristy" but another traveler we met said the visit was worth it just to witness what "bucolic" truly meant. I have to agree. Seeing all the cute round doors and Bilbo's icon sign ("No Admittance Except on Party Business") was fun, but overall the enjoyment was walking through what felt like an especially elaborately themed and beautiful botanic gardens. All the little sets of miniature clothes set out to dry on clotheslines were pretty great too!

Shadie decked out and ready to blackwater raft.

Having taken a nice hot shower to recover from our cold and dark underground experience, we hit the road again, headed for the Whanganui River to camp before putting on the river the next morning. The Whanganui runs down the center of New Zealand's northern island, and while not particularly technical is supposed to be a fun ride.

Alas, in what has become a main theme of our time in New Zealand: we got rained out! This time, things got cancelled before they could start. We got a frantic call with a cancellation that evening as we drove down toward the put-in. The hostess of our canoe rental company sounded at wits end; this was the fourth time she'd cancelled trips this season due to high water on this very unusual weather year. Shadie and I had seen the 100% rainy forecast, and after having slogged through rain on our big backpacking trip and several hikes, were frankly a tad relieved not to have to canoe and camp through rain too. We comforted our canoe hostess, and pulled over at the one restaurant still open in the tiny town we were passing through to frantically re-plan the days ahead.

We decided to follow the best weather and ended up in Whangarei (pronounced Vangeray), in the Northland3, staying at another laid back holiday park, plopping our tent right next to the Hatea River. In Whangarei, we walked to beautiful waterfalls along the river, among tall kauri trees, through overgrown bush in a new botanic gardens, along volcanic coastline, into cute arts and crafts shops, and past historic buildings. We also cooked simple meals in the communal kitchen, chatted with locals on holiday up here for the weekend, and randomly got a ton of free bread and backed goods when a grocery dropped off dozens of bags of bread at the holiday park.

Following Hobbiton we spent a few days in Hamilton, a more human if no less whimsical town. One of my favorite stops here was the Hamilton Gardens, which featured collections of separate, small, themed gardens. The Gardens, built on a former landfill, explores the context, history and meaning of gardens through time, and from around the world. Wandering through makes you feel like you're passing through history (e.g. ancient roman gardens, 16th century Renaissance gardens, and Victorian era gardens) to far-flung corners of the world (e.g Chinese and Japanese gardens, as well lush Asian tropical jungles and Islamic paradisical palace pool gardens) to fantasy lands (moving trees of Alice and Wonderland, and party-ready Mansfield Garden from the short story).

Hamilton as had a lovely river, which we took a dip in, great restaurants and several nice hikes nearby.

Footnotes:

1) One of the more interesting things about visiting Hobbiton was learning more about how movie sets are made and used. Hobbiton had hobbit houses at a variety of scales along different streets, which allowed them to better create illusion of the hobbits' diminutive stature. They also created a fully plastic and extremely realistic life-size giant oak tree after the real one standing behind Bilbo's house died in between filming of two of the movies!

2) Before seeing glowworms in New Zealand I didn't know what exactly these creatures were, why they light up or how. Glowworms are actually the larvae of a flying insect gnat. They spend most of their lives in this larval form, sending down sticky strings with bioluminescent glows at the end to attract other bugs. Like a spider's web, the bugs get caught in the sticky strings and give the larvae something to eat.

3) New Zealanders call anything north of Auckland, the "northlands". Not particularly creative, given they also didn't name either of their islands.

Duck, that halfling door is a bit small for us Edain.

Emerging from the dark after nearly 4 hours underground.

Glowworms up close!

Our next stop off turned out to be one of our most daring memorable adventures of the whole trip: blackwater rafting in the Waitomo Caves. The Waitomo Caves are a series of several thousand limestone caves near the town of Waitomo. The Caves are known primarily as a great place to see glowworms.

We came to see the glowworms but got excited by the prospect of blackwater rafting and so booked a tour. What, you ask, is blackwater rafting? And I tell you its a silly marketing gimmick of a name that refers to the supposed counterpart of whitewater rafting but on rivers that flow underground in caves where its dark or black. In our case, our caving adventure involved a mix of hiking through knee deep water, squeezing through cavern holes barely large enough to squirm through, floating (in wetsuits and on tubes), and even swimming underwater when there wasn't enough clearance above the surface! We were equipped with 5mm wetsuits, booties, and headlamps and were underground for almost four hours! It was quite the adventure. And we did indeed see thousands of glowworms, making their own tiny galaxy on the ceilings of the caves.2

When we returned to Auckland, it was the week of Christmas, and everything was relaxed and festive if not at all white and frosty. We were staying in a room in private home Airbnb for the first time, and our hosts were also hosting their relatives while we were there. It made for a full house, but we got to have lots of pleasant conversations about New Zealand politics and government, since one of them worked for the state. I enjoyed a visit to the Auckland Art Gallery, a fantastic (and free) art museum that featured historic and modern artists; art featuring the Maori both by Maori artists and portraits of the Maori people was of most interest. Shadie and I also visited the local pool multiple times. Not only was it an Olympic size pool, but it also included a gym, a sauna, and a eucalyptus scented steam room! Our most memorable venture in Auckland, though, was a Christmas eve day spent on Waiheke island. The island is reached by a 45 minute ferry ride, and is most known for its various wineries and high-end restaurants. Rather than pay for an expensive wine tour bus, we ate some very scrumptious pulled pork sandwich at a small stand and embarked on one of the hikes around the edge of the island. It turned out be glorious, one of my favorite on the trip, with fantastic views of private little beaches, cliffed harbors, and eye-popping mansions. Afterwards, we did make it to one fancy winery, Mudbrick Vinyards, before finding our way back to the mainland.

For Christmas day, we jogged from our current home in Newmarket to Mount Eden, a park encompassing one of the many old volcanic craters in Auckland. We also got some free croissants for breakfast from our hosts as they invited us to crash their family get-together, and then headed into the CBD to a high-end hotel, where we'd booked a fancy (and expensive) Christmas dinner to compensate for not be being home with family. Dinner did not feature the much talked of traditional dessert of kiwi pavlova but was still quite tasty. The next day we were ready for our quick hop flight to Sydney!

Beautiful Waiheke island.

Haunting portrait of a Maori woman from the late 1800s.

The tree behind us is called pōhutukawa but is often nicknamed the Christmas tree because it has such lovely bright red flowers around Christmas time.

Olympic length pool!

Fancy Christmas dinner didn't make up for not being with family, but still scrummy.