A wuss in the Adventure capital of the world

It's been a busy couple of days since my last post. I've been on the go since Monday morning, slowly but surely travelling down to the south. Monday morning started off bright and early to take the bus from Auckland to Whitianga to view the Coromandel peninsula. I started off slightly sad to be saying goodbye to Claire, the new friend I had met in my early days in Auckland and had met up with again in the Bay of Islands. It's all part of the travelling business, but it's bizarre how quickly friendships can be made and lost...

The Coromandel peninsula is a gorgeous place to visit. The highlight of the day is supposed to be Cathedral Cove, a beautifully shaped cove by the east coast of the North Island. The Magic bus brings us to a car park (parking lot for us Canadians) and we are to walk down to the cove. The bus driver let us know that is quite a good walk back (meaning uphill, yet again) and that we have 1 hour and a half before we leave. Clueless little old me spends like 15 minutes up top taking pictures, going to the bathroom, slowly getting started down the slope when I first notice the sign saying that the walk to the Cove is 45 minutes. As I'm quickly going downhill, my math skills kick-in and I figure if it's 45 minutes one-way, it's at least 1 hour and a half return trip (duh). And since it's all downhill to get there, I imagine it will take me even longer to get back. And even better yet, since I am the slowest walker I've ever met, I figure if it's 45 minutes for most people, it'll probably be even longer for me... So I start to panic and decide to forgo Cathedral Cove and go to the 2 different bays that are on the way day (Gemstone Bay and another whose name I forgot). They were quite beautiful, but still, I was disappointed I wimped out of seeing the main event...

We also stopped in at Hot Water Beach on our way to Whitianga. This is where you take a shovel with you a dig yourself a hole that fills with steaming hot water being heated by the geothermic activity right below. The smaller the whole, the hotter the water. Just dipping your toe in one of these holes can scald you in 2 seconds flat. Pretty cool, yet somehow scary as well. I figure if water is that hot just on the surface, we can't be too far from an explosion or something. Seriously, New Zealand is a beautiful country, but I wouldn't want to live here. It's made up almost entirely of volcanoes that are destined to erupt. It's not a question of if, but when. I'd rather not be here when it happens :-)

The next day was spent travelling from Whitianga (nice sleepy beach town) to Rotorua, by way of the Waitomo. For those of you who've seen the Planet Earth DVDs, Waitomo is where they have the glowworm caves. I was looking forward to this place even before I got to NZ and was not disappointed. You can visit the caves in a few different ways, either by abseiling down into them, blackwater rafting (rafting in the darkness of the caves), tubing down the river or by simply walking in and taking a boat to see the glowworms. Guess which one I chose? Obviously by the title of my post, I chose the easiest way and walked into them and then took a boat. It was amazing. You're in the pitch black cave and can't see 1 foot in front of you, but if you look up, you can see thousands and thousands of blue dots lighting up the cave's ceiling! Who would of thought that I could get excited over a bunch of worms!

The final destination for that day was Rotorua, the stinkiest place in all of NZ. And I mean that literally. Rotorua is the hub of geothermic activity in NZ, and the whole place smells of sulfur. The smell is worse some days than others, and it seems we were lucky to be there on a good day. If that was I good day, I wouldn't want to be there on a bad day. Piew! It's really cool though to be walking around town and see steam come up from cracks in rocks or from ponds of water. That and boiling mud! Rotorua is also THE place to do a Maori traditional evening. They bring you in a bus to a traditional Maori village and they put on a show for you. You finish off the evening with a hangi, a Maori meal cooked up under the earth. Kind of like their own version of a mechoui... This is what I did for Halloween. And since quite a few of you have asked me, I can now confirm to you that Halloween is basically non existent here in NZ. I heard of one bar that had a Halloween night, but that's in. No candy, no masks, no decoration, nothing.

It's been an excellent couple of days. The weather has been good to me up until now (it's currently raining, that's why I'm on the Internet) and I'm slowly getting a farmer's tan (face and arms only). And every time I get on the Magic bus, I see familiar faces from previous buses as well as meet new people. The most interesting conversation I've had lately is with a Japanese girl who is in NZ for 2 weeks. She tries really hard, but doesn't speak English very well. At one point, there I was in the middle of a typical conversation (how long are you here for, where are you going next, which has been your favorite spot so far, ...) with a girl her and another girl from Taiwan. Neither of them speaking much English and all of us using sign language to understand each other. Hilarious!

Hope you all enjoyed Halloween. I'm in Taupo now until Saturday and off to Wellington next. Not sure how long I'll stay, since I only have 3 weeks left in NZ and the South island is supposed to be even better than the North...