8. North Island - New Zealand

8. North Island

We left Auckland and headed south to Waitomo.  Waitomo is a very small area where there are many caves.  The most famous one is the Waitomo Glow Worm Cave.   It is actually a huge cave system where you can tour by walking and boat.  The glow worms are everywhere.

You are not allowed to take photographs in this cave as a flash would disturb the glow worms who would then extinguish their lights.  Glow worms have an eleven months lifecycle. Nine months are spent in the larvae state.  That is the stage that we were viewing.  During this time the larvae are suspended in a hammock like structure. 

They create sticky strings that extends down from their hammocks.  The lights that the worms shine attract flies and bugs who are them trapped in the strings. The larvae pull the strings back up and eat their catch.  It was all a bit surreal.

We also visited another cave “Raipura”.  This cave has a lot of stalactites and stalagmites. They were beautiful. 

In parts of this cave you could also see glow worms.  You could take photographs here, but the glow worms were so far away that the camera couldn’t focus.  Oh well at least we’ve got the memory.

Our next stop was Taupo.  We’d been here before and enjoyed the scenery so we decided to break our journey with an overnight stop. Taupo is in the centre of the North Island within the Thermal Springs area.  We visited a Thermal park “Craters of the Moon” where you view the steam rising out of the holes and craters in the earth.

We got quite close to the steam and found out how hot and smelly it is.  Taupo is on the banks of a large lake where many water activities take place. To get a good view of the lake we went to Waipahihi Gardens. 

It is situated quite high up the hillside, so you get a good view over the area.

We headed west to Hawkes Bay. The towns of Napier and Hastings were badly hit by an earthquake in 1931.  Both towns were virtually destroyed.  They were rebuilt, mainly in the Art Deco style.

Napier is said to be the Art Deco capital of the world. We walked through the towns admiring the architecture and street sculptures.

The centre of Hastings has some interesting art work.  There are some Maori carvings and some wandering sheep.

The journey south was a long one – over four hours. Half way through the journey we were diverted due to a problem in one of the gorges.  Our detour was over the mountain.  The scenery was magnificent.

Our final stop in the north island was Wellington – the capital of New Zealand. We didn’t have much time here, so we decided to go to the waterfront area and visit “Te Papa Museum of New Zealand”. The majority of the museum tells the story of the settlers. 

The first settlers being the Maori’s who came from islands in the Pacific. The museum then goes on to show how others from all over the world have made their way to New Zealand.  There are other exhibitions at the museum.  At the moment there is an exhibition about the Gallipoli landing in World War one. 

They have very realistic models of some of soldiers and a nurse who served during the war.  You could spend many hours here, but we only had a couple of hours.

Our flight off of the North Island was by special transport.