KTMusings

After 8 nights (for me) in Parnell, we were on the road to explore outside of Auckland! Ryan caputured a shot of us leaving the city: And also a video showing us driving on the "wrong" side of the road: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4B9dgeujiw It didn't take long to get outside the city limits and get our first views of the gorgeous countryside: It was about a 2 hour drive down to the Waitomo Caves. When we got close, we stopped at our first "real" New Zealand grocery store (as opposed to the little marts we visited the week before) and got some provisions: bread, chips, apples, cookies, milk. Dana and Ryan brought a jar of peanut butter with them (since PB is decidedly different (and gross, in my opinion) in NZ). We had a picnic lunch out of the back of our car in the parking lot across the street from the cave entrance: We met up with our tour group around 1 and went first to Ruakuri cave. We walked around for quite a while, getting to check out lots of form...

Dana and Ryan arrived today! I was up at 4:15am to drive to the airport to pick them up - driving keeps getting easier, though I was a little thrown off by some construction detours on the way. Also funny - as I was pulling up to the airport and into the parking lot I was thinking "how am I going to get the parking ticket out of the little machine when I'm on this side of the car?!" ... but of course, the machines are on the right so you can reach them from the driver's window. Once we gathered up the Bohlens and their belongings, we headed back to the Chalet and took a little snooze (all of us piled into my tiny room and slept wherever we could find space) and then Kelly made us breakfast. We then made a quick stop at the library to send an email to let everyone know they'd arrived safely, then started the walk into town to catch the ferry to Rangitoto Island to hike up the volcano. Rangitoto, en route via ferry: Off the ferry, ready to hike! It rained on us alm...