Next is a day in Rotorua/ Waitomo area. We passed by the World famous Paeroa where L&P originated. (It's world famous in New Zealand) haha We even got some to drink. Hurray. It was essentially carbonated lemonade (more lemonade then like sprite) pretty good anyways.
Above is the oh so sacred to the Maori people: Green Lake. You cannot touch this lake. (If it had been sunny, the color would've been a lot more obvious.)
Below is the blue lake which is literally right next door. I took both pictures standing in exactly the same spot. This one is not as sacred so you can swim or boat around on it. Again... colors would be more vivid in sunlight. It was said the colors were attributed to the type of shells ground up on the bottom of the lake.
Then below is neither of these 2 lakes however it is the very exciting lake we camped on the first night! This picture was taken from our tent's front door. It was AWESOME! (Too bad the water was much too cold and the weather not quote hot.. no swimming for me)
On to the very exciting Waitomo Caves! We did the Foot Whistle cave( it just sounded more exciting) These were my favorite formations... I don't know they're just somewhat creepy looking.
This was the short and sweet little entrance to the cave. Not too many stairs :) And a pretty neat opening for what it becomes. The biggest draw here of course was to see glow worms! Which we did actually see quite a few! We entered and exited the same way so we walked first in the dark to see the worms and in the light on the way back. It was somewhat gross because with the lights on you could see the millions of little webs hanging straight down over your head as you walked.. made me nervous about walking in the dark at first. haha There was a portion of the cave as well where we walked with no lights at all! Completely in the dark holding onto a rail to admire all the lights! Really really cool!
To the right is THE foot whistle formation for which the cave was named after. They said it looked like someone's feet hanging down out of a steam train engine's whistle.. kind of clever I thought.
The tour was excellent as our guide made hilarious jokes and was very entertaining. He also gave us a little history lesson on how they used to hold candles on tours and would use a magnesium lantern to light up one large area for everyone to see... The idea of not having flash flights but still doing cave tours kind of amazed me.. I guess I never thought of this as a tourist activity back in the day.
And a few pictures below... The incredible glow worms! haha sorry I really couldn't get any pictures.. like at all of them. But there were some parts with a tonnn of them!
We also took a little nature walk in the Waitomo area that was neat. It took only like 45 minutes and was really well paved. The whole area felt pretty tropical with ferns everywhere which was awesome since it wasn't humid and tropical feeling! (Although there were lots of bugs..)
The nature walk did have some pretty cool little caves and adventures as well as this pretty little creek and waterfalls.
We got to walk all through that mass of cave.. Pretty neat!
And this was a lookout in a huge cavern where that waterfall fell quite a bit. I would definitely recommend this little walk to people visiting that area!
Yay Glow worms-
On our second night of camping adventure we stayed by the hot pools! They have this little walk by the boiling river and whenever the steam actually manages to clear.. you can see the water physically boiling at a nice 98 degrees Celsius...
NO SWIMMING! haha
I thought the water boiling was pretty neat since most of the time all you could see was the steam. Like this picture to the left...
There were parts a lot more shallow as well.
The camping site was nice although expensive, it did give you access to thehot pools they made! They had some really nice ones like the one below. Or some larger swimming pool kinds. All were pretty hot! They manage to cool the water from 98 degrees celcius down to around 35-40 degrees celcisu.. STILL really hot. haha we couldn't even stay in them that long, so I'd maybe consider this more of a NZ Winter destination.
Here's a picture of the overall pools they had. I think the steam from the river is the coolest part.. IT just looks so AWESOME!
This is one of the larger cascades they had to cool the water down. Ironic isn't it how the colder the weather, the cooler the water (not that they could ever cool it much more but still...)
A note about camping in New Zealand: There are some really fun campsites such as this one and a tonnn of campervan areas as well. It is more expensive as even the campsite with just a pit toilet was $10 a person and the more expensive campsite was $21 a person (so yes it cost us $84 for the campsite..) but it had a huge kitchen and showers and lounge area which was neat. Camping is defintely a good option, but I wouldn't necessarily rule out hotels for at least some of the nights.
I broke my record and camped for 3 consecutive nights which I have not done for a longgg while. Way to go me!
Over~Amanda
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