Waitomo, New Plymouth, Wanganui and Wellington
23rd-31st January 2007

I wish I was a Glow worm, a glow worm's never glum, how could you be unhappy when the sun shines out your bum?

... so the poem goes... I'm not sure how you'd tell if a glow worm is smiling or not, but it was well worth checking them out just to see. So, on our way to New Plymouth we made an overnight stop off in Waitomo to see the famous glow worm caves, which were definitely as spectacular as billed. We donned the regulation comedy helmets and entered the caves, all silmultaneously blinding each other as we figured out how best to angle the head torches, and set off in pursuit of these famous larvae. We weren't disappointed. Peter, our guide, loaded us all into his inflatable raft (thankfully more sturdy than it sounds), and instructed us to turn our torches off. We then drifted gently through the caves for over a half hour in the darkness until our eyes became accustomed ... and we saw hundreds of thousands of glowing larvae bums. Once I'd got over the claustrophibia and the irrational fear that the cave was suddenly going to fill with water, we were, as the tour promised 'Spellbound'. Definitely a must on anyone's itinerary.


What Mountain?

After leaving Waitomo we drove towards New Plymouth in the hope of seeing the spectacular Mount Taranaki (or Mount Egmont, depending on which guide book you read). Unfortunately, as luck would have it, we were under a blanket of very heavy fog (I believe, at about the same time as the UK was experiencing its first powdering of snow - except it's winter there), so our view of the mountain was non-existent, as we couldn't even see the car in front of us, let alone any scenery. Still, it didn't matter we were there for three whole days, and you can hardly miss the thing, we thought, it's about a mile and a half high! ... oh what a pair of fools we felt when after 3 days we still couldn't seen it. But since I took the trouble to learn all about it anyway, here's some stats for you.. so, as I said, it's about a mile and a half (a little over 2.5km) high, and it is about 350 years since it last erupted - apparently it's long overdue another eruption so my ears were peeled for any distant rumbling sounds, although I'm kind of thinking if it did go off, the distant rumblings would be heard in somewhere like Invercargill, and the sound in New Plymouth may be a few decibels higher... more of an ear-drum-perforating "bang" I guess. We did get to see it in postcards, and film format, as we watched the Last Samurai in the park one evening, which was apparently mostly filmed in NZ, and features quite a lot of footage of the Mountain. So that was pretty special, as Mount Taranaki was (supposedly) in the cloudy distance behind the screen.

We also drove halfway up it, in a foolish attempt to see the top, thinly disguised as a trip to see Dawsons Falls. Dawsons falls was actually the biggest waterfall we've seen since we arrived so it was worth the drive anyway, and we actually got a few minutes to ourselves to watch it before we were joined by others. On our way out of the area I kept a constant vigil in the rear view mirror in case it appeared, but all we saw was the base... still, it ws a pretty impressively wide base, so we used our imagination as to how high the peak was.

Wanganui

We stopped briefly in Wanganui, but as we were headed to Wellington to look for jobs we unfortunately only had one night there. Still, it was a great place, and we happened to be there the day they had some sort of motor boat racing on the river, which was lucky for us. We also got in an elevator up the hill (disappointed to find this wasn't an escalator as we were accidentally informed by the guy in the hostel), still, some good views from the tower at the top and well worth the dollar fee instead of climbing the hill! We really liked Wanganui so intend to go back there at some stage to investigate it a bit more.

Windy Wellington

We had been warned of Wellington's windiness, but really you don't quite believe it until you get there. The guidebooks will also inform you of certain man-made wind tunnels. I doubt any of these were intentional, but they certainly do exist... there you are, happily striding along a street in the glorious sunshine, when you round a corner and ... whooshf! you're halfway up the next road without meaning to be. Suffice to say, we spent most of the time with hair like Freddie Boswell.
Still, despite the crazy gusts, we totally loved Wellington and definitely hope to settle there for a while. Had a couple of chats with people about jobs and it all looks very promising so far, so keep your fingers crossed for us!

Next installment coming soon...