It was totally late at night by the time we arrived in New Zealand. On the plane ride, we had to fill out entry forms for New Zealand. We ended up having to declare that we went hiking in Australia. So we had to get into the special line where they inspected our shoes and made us step on this blue spongy material that was soaked with some sort of antimicrobial liquid.

In the airport there was a big welcome sign and we passed under an arch that I assume was created with Maori influences. I didn't have my camera out so didn't get a picture of it.

We went to pick up the rental car and I got ready for my first experience of driving on the other side of the road. When we were passengers in various Australian vehicles, it didn't seem like driving on the other side of the road weirded me out too much. Well, I obviously underestimated things because the weird part was having the steering wheel on the right hand side of the car instead of the left hand side. So it was easy to tend to drift out of the lane on the left hand side. I had to always focus on keeping unnaturally close to the dividing line on the right hand side. And of course, as soon as I tried to leaving the parking lot, I ended up switching my windshield wipers on because the wipers and the turn signal were reversed too. I think I was really lucky that the gas and break pedals were normally placed.

Luckily, my dad had noticed before the trip that I had originally booked a car with a manual transmission. But even with the automatic transmission I managed to mess up and make the car be stuck in second gear instead of the normal drive setting. Oops. Good thing the hotel was pretty close, and the roads were not that filled up with traffic.

We got to the hotel safely, which was the cheapest hotel that was relatively close to the airport. Which also meant that it was one of the most ghetto hotels I've ever stayed at. It wasn't horrible, but it didn't exactly exude confidence either. It was OK, since we were only staying there because it was so late and we couldn't really get anywhere.

The next day we headed out for Waitomo Caves, and I got to practice more driving on the wrong side. Good practice since the roads in between cities are pretty empty, even though they are all two-lane roads. We stopped by a McCafe along the way for some brunch (which is basically a McDonalds).

I forgot to mention that the night that we got back from the Blue Mountains in Sydney, there was a pretty major quake off the south coast of New Zealand. I only happened to know about it because I had the TV on that night and I saw on the news that Australia had issued a tsunami alert for the southern part of the country. Obviously a little distressing since we were pretty close to the harbor, but luckily nothing happened. I talked to a few people in New Zealand about it and as expected, none of them felt anything, being so far away on the North Island.

We got to our lodgings at Waitomo Caves, which was basically some accomodations run by a nice elderly couple and their dog, Gypsy. I had thought that Gypsy would be used to people coming up since it seemed like people often stayed at the place, but Gypsy barked noisily at us whenever she saw us. But she was nice. The couple were really nice too, explaining what the various activities we could do were.

The room was great -- nice and cozy. We got the highest one, which gave us a bit of a view. And there were toasty (electric) blankets and two heaters in the room. Not that it got really cold. And also a jar of Colin's homemade biscuits that was really good. I wish I had figured out how good they were earlier because then I certainly would have eaten all of them!

We headed out to solidify our schedule. We had to change the reservations that we had made online because of some shuffling around, but everything worked out. We also decided against the trip where you get into the water in wetsuits because we figured the water was just too cold for us. We saw several people do that tour though, both after they were done and when we were in the caves (they were floating in inner tubes below us).

First up, we went to the Aranui Cave tour. We got there a little early and walked on the little path nearby for a little bit. We were planning to come back at night and wanted to make sure we had some idea of how to get to the bridge before we came back with only flashlights (or torches, as they call them over there. Also, parking lots are carparks, and cookies are biscuits, and instead of renting things, you hire them). We didn't have time to walk the entire path -- we had to save that for the next day.

The Aranui Cave itself had a different quality to it than the two Jenolan Caves that we had gone to, but a lot of it was the same too. What was definitely the same was that every tour guide has to talk about how before this cave was at the bottom of the ocean, and it was made from layers of shells that turned into limestone, and this is a stalactite and that is a stalagmite...oh man, this was only our third cave tour and it was already getting horribly old. Oh, and I take back what I said before at the Jenolan Caves -- it was this cave that had the tall red-headed kid who kept touching everything.

Afterwards, we were able to grab a little bite to eat while waiting for the next tour to start, which would be at the Ruakuri Cave. This one was ultra wet from all the raining that had been recently going on (it was slightly raining when we drove to the hotel the night before). And again with the big speech, limestone, meeellions of years ago, blahblah. The entrance was this big spiral staircase that went around probably five or six revolutions. It made me think of the cave level in GoldenEye. Also, here is where we saw some people down in the river below in their inner tubes. Both Patricia and I shouted out at different times asking them how cold was it, but we didn't get any responses (maybe their teeth were chattering too much...). We also got to see a few glowworms hanging around...cool...

On our way out back up the spiral, our guide pointed out that there were some miniature stalactites that were forming out of the artificial ceiling at the top (it looked like it was a metal ceiling). So stalactites really can start forming anywhere.

That was it for our activities for the day (except our adventure at night). So we hung around at the room and then decided to get some dinner at the local bar/pub. It was pretty packed. Patricia said she saw one of our guides (I'm assuming it was the younger, female one), but I didn't recognize anybody (not that I was looking very hard). A lot of people were drinking beer, and watching the game up on a big screen. Patricia and I could not figure out what game they were playing. We thought we had seen rugby on TV at Sydney, but the game they were watching looked slightly different (but also rugby-ish). I also saw a flyer posted that gave some interesting facts, including one that said that it wasn't illegal for underage kids to drink alcohol, the law only said that it was illegal to sell kids alcohol. And other facts that were on the side of more drinking, basically.

Well, it was alternatively raining and not raining while we were eating, but we decided to head down to the Aranui path anyways to see if we could catch the glowworms. That's right, Colin told us that the bridge on the path was a great place to see glowworms at night (and it's also free!, although that didn't matter too much to us). So we drove down there (the only car in the carpark) and struck out with our torches.

The weather wasn't too bad, in fact, it was basically great when we got to the carpark. The wide open carpark also let us get a view of an absolutely beautiful southern night sky, since there was basically no light pollution anywhere around. One of the few times that I've gotten to see the disk of the galaxy, and experience the awe of what our ancestors must have felt when they looked up and saw all the twinkling lights. When we got to the bridge (with a fairly thundering river below it), we did get to see a bunch of glowworms just hanging around, doing their thang. Well, we couldn't really see the actual glowworms, just their glow. Little blue lights. It was pretty neat, like a miniature night sky. We stuck around for a few minutes, enjoying the romantic nature of it (which included the little fear of it being almost pitch black all around), but the rain was starting to come down again. I tried to get some good pictures of the glowworms, and by the time we were done there was rain all over my camera. So we headed back to our room.

I wasn't done yet, though. I decided that I wanted some pictures of the awesome night sky, so I told Patricia that I would head down there again, and she could stay at the room. I went down there again and try to get good shots, but the clouds kept obscuring parts of the sky. And it was hard to see where the clouds were because they were black on a black sky. I could only assume there was a cloud when a section of the sky was completely black. For some reason, the clouds move ultra-fast in New Zealand. I would take a couple long-exposure pictures and then the clouds were either gone or in a totally different section of the sky. At one point, I decided I wanted to try to get more pictures of the glowworms, but I hadn't brought a torch and didn't want to go down the path armed only with whatever pitiful lights I had (it basically would have been my camera and GPS displays. And though they look really bright at night time and totally ruin your nightvision, they are still pitifully dim in terms of lighting your way.

So I went back (noting that people were still in the pub, it was a little past 10pm), and, satisfied, drifted off to sleep with Patricia. =)

New Zealand is green. That's the first word that comes into mind. All the hills are green with grass. It's really striking compared to the Bay Area where all the hills that you see are basically brown or yellow. I wonder where all that dead plant life comes from. You always see dead yellow brush on the hills around here, but you never see it green. Shouldn't that dead brush go away at some point? Or does it get replenished, but then, where is the green when the hill should be alive?