Northlands - Day 2: Through the farm to the beaches!

Prior to coming to New Zealand, we were not at all familiar with the type of hiking that has hikers start out in paddocks with livestock. As one might imagine, this type of hike is super common in NZ. I was fascinated by the baby calves, on their spindly little legs, and with their impossibly large eyes.

I thought it was so funny that the little bed and breakfast where we spent one night provided us with toast and jam and fruit which was all so tasty. The part we didn't eat was the vegemite (marmite.)

Here's Tom and Aidan not eating any Vegemite at all

Here is the little pond outside our cottage where Aidan decided to end the shortest game of hide and seek we've every played. He ended it by trying to hide in the reeds and going ankle deep into the muddy water, and then calling out for help. You may notice that in the next few photos, he's actually wearing my sneakers.

Another awesome climbing tree - check out Aidan's shoes...

Calla lilies - growing everywhere in the wild - I love this place!

Yes, it's another amazingly beautiful beach with not a single soul on it.

Peanut butter and nutella sandwich picnic on the beach!

Jasper's practicing being a rock biter. (we just watched The Never Ending Story for the first time)

This cool shell has been worn away by the ocean till it ended up looking like a rose.

Yes, all these disparate landscapes in one single day. The boys really were this happy all day - and so were their parents.

First day of holidays: Mangawhai beaches

Yes, we know it's been a long time since our last post. We have been away for a bit and somehow, when you're behind on something like blogging, the further behind you are, the more impossible the task of catching up becomes and the less likely you are to post anything....

So, I'm going to try to post a few photos to give a sense of what we've been doing with ourselves.

Below is the view from our new house just before we left for Northland. The lake looks different every day - I never get tired of looking.

First stop on our tour of the Northland, a spot called Mangawhai heads. We spent lots of time generally hiking and playing on beautiful, empty beaches. Here are the boys sharing some trail mix:

Amazing gigantic perfect climbing trees on this beach.

The only photos we have of Tom and me are taken by Aidan. Despite the tilting horizon, I like this one. I like Jasper sitting on the sand behind us.

Worms in Caves

Hey, there, Tom here.  Let me fill you in on a bit of glowworm cave action.

We decided that family time was just as important as school time, so we made our kids skip school on a Monday at the risk of being perceived as bad parents.  We drove them up to a place called Waitomo where there is a lot of limestone under the ground.  In case you have forgotten your high school earth science course, let me remind you that limestone is often made of the skeletons of marine organisms - basically old shells.  That makes the rock high in calcium carbonate and prone to weird kinds of erosion if the water flowing over it or through it is slightly acidic.  In Waitomo, the erosion has created crazy cave systems under a pretty unbelievable karst landscape.  Karst, in case you also forgot what that is, is a landscape composed of partially dissolved rock, so strange rock formations stick up out of the earth all over the place.

What makes Waitomo particularly cool is the presence of glowworms in many of the caves.  The New Zealand glowworm is actually the maggot of the indigenous fungus gnat, but "Fungus Gnat Maggot" is less marketable than "Glowworm."  These weird little beasts live on the roofs of caves and spin webs made of silk.  They then drop down as many as 70 silk lines from the nest, each a couple of inches long, covered in mucus droplets.  These lines act as snares to catch unsuspecting flying insects.  The maggots then start glowing due to a bioluminescent chemical reaction in their excretory organs.  Sounds gross, but it is one of the most amazing natural sights I've ever seen.

We arrived in Waitomo in the morning after a two-hour drive.  Here is a photo of sheep (of course) running over the karst landscape.  

Here is the family enjoying some karst.

We joined a tour with about 6 other folks and made our way to one of the many glowworm caves around Waitomo.

Here are the boys walking along the path to a profusion of plant life.  At the center of the patch of forest is a river and a cave entrance.

Our guide took our photo before we entered the caves.

We were issued helmets with lights.  The boys were well pleased.

Here is the cave entrance.  There is a little path to the right that entered the cave on a rock ledge, so we didn't have to wade in.

One last photo before the cave!

OK, so cave photography is hard.  There are no good photos of the cave.  I can offer this one, which shows the glowworm threads as lit up by the guide's torch.  They look unpleasant here, but you have to imagine this: a long dark cave with a river running through it, completely black except for the glow of thousands of tiny blue lights covering the roof of the cave.  We were sitting in a little rubber raft, floating down the length of the cave, carried by the river with only the sounds of rushing water echoing off the cave walls, looking up at a brilliant starry night of blue lights.  It is probably best that there aren't any good photos - they wouldn't really capture the beauty of the experience.

 Here is a photo walking back out of the cave.

We entered another cave, this one without glowworms, and this is a photo of it.  Best I could do.

Afterwards, we stopped by the iSite.  There are iSites in almost every town of any real size in New Zealand - they are like little tourist information centers.  Here is Aidan learning all about karst by standing on it.

To finish our trip to Waitomo, we went on a little nature walk nearby.  It was amazingly cool.  There were caves everywhere.  Here I am checking one out.

Here is Jasper, wielding his fern greatsword.

This is the river the runs through the park we were in.

The path itself wound through some natural caves.

Here is another good shot of the river.

Aidan took this portrait of the two of us.

Here are a few more cool looking caves in the wall of the valley.

In the end, Jasper defeated our Corolla with Exfernibur and we were able to return home safely.

Our house

We're back!

Yes, the internet was elusive, but now we are in our new house, and feeling settled, as we have the ability to use the internet without using a cell phone network. I'll try to post a few quick things, so as to catch up a bit.

 Our new place is closer to the school and has an amazing view.

This is our street. It's a cul de sac. I recently learned that the psychiatrist in town, from Germany, lives across the street from us. I also got the skinny on the elderly woman who lives next door. My friend knows her daughter and our realtor is related to her somehow. Taupo is a small town.

Here's the house with our new car (we had to return the rental car.) I've been calling the car "Erkel." (see the license plate?) Nobody else in the family seems to have noticed how funny that is. I expect they'll catch on very soon.

Here's a little deck that will be so awesome if we ever get any outdoor furniture. And a grill. Tom's coworker has offered us a gas grill, but he warned us that it was "a bit dodgy." We might just do without a grill.

This is me, trying to clean the kitchen - note the large gap in the wall where there should be a refrigerator. This needed rectifying before we felt "settled." Luckily, we found a man in Taupo who raises hens and taught me that hens don't actually lay in the winter unless they are subjected to artificial light sources. He also repairs and sells used appliances. We took a fridge, washer and dryer off his hands - because our rental house doesn't include any of those things! I wish I had taken a photo of his hens. They had feathers down their legs. I couldn't take a photo of their eggs because there weren't any.

Here's Tom with our view of the big city lights of Taupo. Actually I kind of love our view. Here's one from the waning daylight hours: