Monday, February 25, 2013

February 25, 2013 Auckland, New Zealand

Auckland, New Zealand 7:00a to 5:00p

Auckland was a tough one to decide what to do. City and/or coastal or countryside tour with waterfalls, Mt Eden, seeing the largest colony of the Muriwai Takapu Gannets and more!
We opted for an all day tour to the Waitomo Valley to experience the Glow-Worm Caves. I booked with a company called Milestone Tours who provide our tour for the day and the cave portion is handled by Spellbound.  www.glowworm.co.nz/   www.milestonetours.co.nz/
Here is a description of our tour:
“If there is time we will stop first at Otorohanga Native Bird Sanctuary. On the drive to Waitomo we add a stop in the pretty village of Pirongia, which has an excellent bakery. We usually recommend that our guests pick-up a sandwiches, pies, wraps and or cakes etc. to eat during the morning tea stop during the Spellbound tour (between caves) – for which purpose we carry picnic blankets and chilly-bins. We also supply snacks on board, just to keep everyone going.
Here is a description of the Spellbound Tour:
Our glowworm display is spellbinding and incomparable!
Glide gently through this extraordinary cave and experience Waitomo's largest, brightest and most breathtaking glowworm display. Don't miss seeing the cave chosen for the BBC's 'Planet Earth' series, taking its place among exceptional caves of the world.
Our glowworm cave has 3 to 4 times more glowworms than any other glowworm cave option anywhere. We are the only company to offer extended glowworm viewing in darkness through most our 45 minutes in the cave.
It takes at least 20 minutes for your eyes to adjust completely to glowworm light, with such exceptional glowworms on display, it's worth taking some time.
Closer glowworms are brighter glowworms – ours are close enough to light up the whole cave.
The Cave of the Spirit, Te Ana o te Atua, complements our glowworm cave by showcasing speleothems, fossils and beautiful natural light effects. This thoughtfully designed cave presentation can make you forget you are actually in a tourist cave.
Our TWO CAVE TOUR includes the Spellbound Glowworm Cave and The Cave of the Spirit.
Tour time – 3 ¼ hours
We’re offering a creatively and thoughtfully arranged sequence of travel, caves, glowworms and walks which combine to make a fun and memorable whole 3 1/4 hour experience.”
Joining us today are Marianne, Jeff & Julie, Dennis & Bonnie, Rita & Frank and Jim.
We were up early and ready to get off, but the ship wasn’t cleared until about 30 minutes later than planned, so we weren’t able to stop at the Kiwi House to see the birds. Our guide thought our ship left later than 5:00 (all aboard at 4:30), so when we explained that we wanted to be back by around 4:00 Ewald of Milestone tours called Spellbound, the company doing our Glow-worm tour and they rearranged our trip for us so we could maximize our time. Our guide was Terry and he was fantastic. Very knowledgeable and during the 2½ hour drive to Waitomo Valley he pointed out things and told us all about New Zealand and as we neared the caves he explained more about the glow-worms.
We stopped on the way at a bakery to pick up sandwiches and desserts for a picnic later.
We started with the walk through Cave of the Spirit. Then we drove to a spot where we had a quick picnic lunch. Then we walked the short distance to the Glow-worm cave where we got in a Zodiac type boat and were amazed by the sheer number of the glow-worms and with no lighting in the cave it seemed illuminated by their glowing lights. Since they are hard to photograph and once in the cave in the dark you can’t take photos, they are sending us an email with some of their photos. Then, it was time to take the scenic ride back to Auckland. The countryside was full of dairy cattle, sheep, goats and geese. (or what we assumed were geese in the distance) Beautiful countryside with hills and mountains. It normally is a bit greener, but they haven’t had as much rain as usual and it was a bit dry. Still very beautiful. Some of our group wanted to stop for wine and other things in a store, so Terry found us a nice store to shop quickly for a few things.

























 




















We were back to the port by a bit after 4:00, so we had about 20 minutes to try and find a quick souvenir and use up the rest of our New Zealand dollars. Got some very nice chocolates.
To bookend our day, the sail in this morning was spectacular. Gorgeous sunrise and the city lights were beautiful. Sail away this evening was very scenic with tons of sailboats against the backdrop of the city. Auckland is known as the “City of Sails” and I can see why! It was hard to pull ourselves away from the beauty, but we needed to quickly change for dinner and the evening show which was a comedian named Big Daddy Jeff Wayne. While not bad, he really isn’t my type of comedy. (style of Jerry Lewis, Red Skelton etc.)
Now for 3 more sea days before we hit Burnie, Tasmania.
Greg is finally over his bronchitis/cold thing he had, now I have it. Many people on the ship have this croupy sounding cough. Today was my worst day so far. Before I just had the annoying cough, but today my nose is running like crazy. ARGH!
 

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