New Zealand adventures!

Kauri trees, forest walks and one extremely fascinating museum filled our days as we travelled down the western coastline of the North Island. To begin it all, we visited a shop that said it had a giant kauri staircase which it did! The gentleman used a swamp kauri log over 45,000 years old and chainsawed a staircase in it. After this feat, he built his shop around it. We saw the largest living kauri tree - estimated to be 2000 years old! As well we spent almost a day in the Kauri Museum - this was a sight not to be missed. Nick especially loved the sawmill and the collection of chainsaws!

After this we had to get some pavement behind us so we could see some of the southern part of the North Island. So a night in Auckland then onto the Waitomo Caves where Nick and I did a Black water rafting trip through a cave. It was an adventure to say the least! We were given our raft (basically an inner tube) then taught how to fall backwards into the raging river and paddle our way back. The cave was amazing - tonnes of glowworms gave us light as we walked and drifted our way through the dark tunnels. One sobering event was the added attraction of an eel that decided to visit us for a small portion of the trip! After this we travelled to Rotorua to check out the thermal pools. We walked through the local park and viwed all the mud pools and geothermal wonders! It was awesome! After this we drove towards mountains in the interior in the search for Lord of the Rings scenery. It was quite a successful journey.