We headed south, not north. That will come later.
Ken picked up a hybrid Yaris Crossover for the next part of our journey. It is a bigger model than any Yaris you would see in Canada and suits our needs quite well. The first part of the drive was on a major highway but we were soon channeled onto much smaller roads for the rest of the day.
We were stopped by a herd of cattle being led by a motor cycle riding cowboy who waved cars off to the side of the road. The herd was followed up by two barking dogs and the cowboy’s (?) Mom on a quad. This was practical, I suppose, but not as intriguing as our Utah experience with real horse bourne cowboys a few years ago.
Next came the maggots. According to the tourist hype, we were off to see glow worms. They are a fascinating little creature, but they are not worms. They are very tiny maggots (larvae) hanging from the ceilings and walls of an interesting cave system. They will eventually become carnivorous fungus gnats. Look them up; their life cycle, and its challenges, are actually interesting, if you’re into biology.
Their excrement glows. This bioluminescence makes the inside of the caves look like a starry, dark night sky. One can hike through the caves, take a boat on an underground river or grab a tire tube and wet suit and head through the fast-flowing river with a guide. At one point, these tubers have to jump blindly over a 1.5-meter fall area, in the dark. We walked.
Though smaller, this cave system had many of the same features as the caves we visited across the southern US last year. One interesting difference was that the ‘curtains’ formed by dripping water and calcium carbonate deposition in these caves was very white, unlike the varied colour in the US caves. Our Maori guide had never heard of these curtains being called bacon due to the coloration in the American caves.
The caves were a 2-hour drive from Auckland. We left them for a supposed 2-hour trip to Lake Taupo. It only takes one minute to miss a single instruction from a mapping app to end up in the wrong place. Two hours became three.
Oops!
Google then directed us onto a freshly graveled 19 km windy, hilly rally car path down to a main highway in a brewing tropical storm. For the next two hours we were on a two lane, no shoulder, winding highway in a tropical down pour. And remember, we were driving on the left-hand side of the road in a car that had the blinkers on the right side of the steering wheel and the wiper blade controls on the left. Visibility was poor and we seldom had more than 10 kms on any given road.
The sun broke out when we reached our lovely small hotel. We have a pretty view over the lake from our partially glassed in balcony.
This area of New Zealand has extensive geothermal resources that have been tapped to provide about 20% of New Zealand’s electricity. The next morning, we toured an area called Craters of the Moon to see and smell some of the still freely venting fields.
Lake Taupo is the largest fresh water lake in NZ. There is only one outlet for the lake at Huka Falls. It is narrow, rocky and the water is a pretty blue, capped with snow white crests as it races through the channel. It is claimed that enough water flows through every two seconds to fill 5 Olympic sized pools.
We stopped at a glass studio, ‘Lava Glass’ just before lunch. They had some good interpretive pieces that reflect the local topography. One of their attractions is a Sculpture Garden that pulls some inspiration from Chihuly. We have seen several of Chihuly’s installations. This group’s effort didn’t impress us, unfortunately.
At 8 pm tonight, the sun is shining as I work on this blog post, but the wind is still strong and will soon bring another wave of rain, as it has all day long.
We were supposed to be on a boat on the lake at 5 this evening to see some Maori sculptures, but the lake was far too rough and the rain too unpredictable so the tour was cancelled.
Tomorrow is supposed to be warm, sunny and calm again as we head off to Rotorua.