Glowworms and Hobbits

It was time to visit the famous glowworms in Waitomo and Hobbiton, we had our touristy week and it was definitely worth it!

We had much more time in Waitomo than most tourists, because we stayed for two nights in a hostel and most visitors just spend a few hours here. On the other hand, Waitomo is very small, so you can see the whole village in a hour. At the first evening we tried the Buffett, that was advertised in our hostel and were quite disappointed. The advert was not wrong, we just thought about something else when we heard Buffett and “all you can eat”. When we arrived at the restaurant, with the free shuttle, quite some people from the shuttle made a face. In front of us was just a big pot of stew, some rice from the rice cooker and potatoes. We tried the make the best out of it and enjoyed the nice view at the restaurant.

Next morning we visited the famous glowworms. First we did a two hour tour in the Ruakuri Cave, which was very interesting and we were in a nice and small group. We saw our first glowworms, which are actually cannibalistic maggot with shiny poo. Further this cave had stunning speleothems, which you can see at the pictures below:

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The second cave we visited was the one and only Waitomo Cave. It was unbelievable how many glowworms we saw. It was like looking at the stars in the sky. Sadly, we were not allowed to take any pictures in the Waitomo Cave.

At the very top of our New Zealand must do list was always Hobbiton. The famous movie set in Matamata is a highlight for every movie-nerd. Hobbiton is a beautiful small village of Hobbit holes and gives you a real feeling of being in the Shire. At the end we even had a beer at the Green Dragon, which is due the high number of visitors in the Shire now the busiest pub in New Zealand.

At the end of our very touristy week we stayed in Rotorua. Rotorua is a very special town, because it has seismic activity nearly everywhere in town. There are a lot of hot spring, geysers and colourful ponds. It was amazing just to walk through the park, seeing the activity. On the downside it smells constantly like rotten eggs in Rotorua.

After Rotorua we did a nice, but short trip to the East Cape and the east coast. We had some beachtime and saw the most eastern point of New Zealand. At the end we arrived in Rotorua again and celebrated Maeve’s birthday at the local food market. Today we are leaving, going to Lake Aniwhenua.

Raglan

We arrived at the west coast and stayed in Raglan, the surf capital, for two nights. Most of our time was spend at the beach with the stunning waves or in our accommodation, the Solscape eco retreat.

For an insight into this short stop of our journey, have a look at those pictures (more information in the description of the pictures):

At the beach

Early morning view

The view from the hostel

Raglan’s famous waves

Where we sleepy, old train wagons

The “garden” at our accommodation

Inside our wagon, we shared the room with four other people

Paihia and Cape Reinga

After one month of wwoofing and one month in the same area, we were really excited to start using our bus pass.

We left Whangarei in a Stray-bus. It was the first time we used the bus pass “Everywhere” and were positiv surprised by the friendly driver who even drove us to the campground in Waitangi.

The following days were filled with exploration in Paihia. The first day we took one of the beautiful bush walks to Opua, but we calculated the distance wrong and ended up doing a 27km (!) trip instead of 17km. We saw a lot of the bays and beaches the Bay of Islands has to offer, but at some point our legs were just too tired to enjoy them for long. At the end of the day we just fell fast asleep in our tent.

We did a bus tour to Cape Reinga, the most nothern point of New Zealand and a spiritual place important to the Maori. They believe it is the point where your soul enters the journey to the afterlife when they die. Also it is the place where two oceans, the Tasman sea and the pacific ocean meet. On our way to get there we drove over the 90 Mile Beach, which is exactly 55 miles long, and had a chance to try sandboarding, which was real fun!

Russel, which lays right across from Paihia, is called the hellhole of the Pacific, because of the city’s past where traders and pirates walked, drank and lived there. It takes just a few mintues by ferry to get there, but we were quite a bit disappointed by the small tourist village in front of us, when we stepped from the ferry into Russel. The village seems to have fallen asleep and it is actually quite boring, if you got lured there by it’s exciting past. The only things reminding you of the past are the small museum and the bullet holes in the walls of the church. Russel might have been the real life Tortuga we know from the Pirates of the Caribbean, but now it is just a few shops, restaurants and a nice view. Nevertheless, I have to admit that it had amazing ice cream, we tried triple chocolate, maple-walnut, salted caramel and white-chocolate-raspberry . It was one of the best so far!

A nice, not too long, walk is from Waitangi to the Haruru falls. On 10km you see a wide range from local bush to mangrove forest. We spend quite some time having lunch at the falls and enjoying the view.

It was amazing, how easy we got in touch with other campers and travellers back at the campground, especially with the german family we met. They even invited us for a great BBQ evening. Most travellers we talked to were very polite, friendly and open, making it a joy to talk to them and exchanging experiences.

We had our own little Halloween party at the beach, surrounded by seagulls (scary animals 😉 ), with fish and chips and more ice cream, at the end of our stay. It was a nice way to spend our last evening in Paihia and the Bay of Islands.

The next morning we made our way to Auckland for a short stop by bus. We left Auckland early the morning after. Now we are on a peninsula famous for being the Kiwi’s favourite holiday destination.