I Don't Think It's "Down Under"

I don't think it's "down under", but it sure is close.  I don't know if you can use that term other than for Australia though.  In any case, we are  under the rest of the world here, although you wouldn't know it.  It feels quite normal.  Nothing is upside down.

Fortunately, we were able to sleep a good part of the 12-hour flight.  The flight was mostly smooth, with a few bumps here and there, and a pretty good bump area at one point.  My friend, who helped me sleep, also helped me not care about any of the bumps.  I don't think I have ever flown over water the entire way, flying anywhere.  No pictures from the plane this time, but here's one of our plane, a nice 777.



We landed safely and soundly (sort of) on New Zealand Air at about 5:30 am Kiwi time, Tuesday morning, which would have been 11:30 am Eastern time Monday morning.  Gotta get your head around that concept.  Here we are just going to the baggage claim area and thankfully, our bags made it onto 3 flights to get here with us!  I was a little worried.



We left the airport car rental, with our car and our package of vouchers and information from "Experience New Zealand Travel" around 7 am.  This is the company we worked with to come up with what we wanted to do.  They booked everything for us, including the car, accommodations, and activities.

We headed south and ended up in Otorohanga where we had a bite to eat.  After all, we hadn't eaten since 4 am on the plane.  This place (Ronnie's Cafe) was recommended to us...meh.



They have a kiwi sanctuary there (the bird, not the people).  And everyone in NZ is big into the All Blacks (the New Zealand rugby team).  This kiwi was wearing shorts.



Sir Edmund Hillary was a New Zealander, of course.  In this town, they have a little alleyway named after him with some historical "stuff".



Our next order of business was to head over to the Waimoto Caves.  This included a tour of Raukuri Cave and the Waitomo Glowworm Caves.  We presented our vouchers for our 12:30 pm tour and obtained our tickets.  We went off to find a beer (since we'd been up since about 3:30 am), and found this nice little cafe/bar.  We walked upstairs to the lounge and checked out the beers on tap.  Right beside the taps was this bug, which the bartender said was a Huhu, and which the bar was named after!  You'd think the bug was there on demand.  Quite a size too (that's my hand).

 

So we did the tours of the caves.  Here is a rock - nice-looking, I thought.

And one of an oyster fossil imbedded in a rock.

We couldn't take pictures of the glowworms.  One because they wouldn't show up in flash, and if taken without flash, it was so bad (without a tripod) it wasn't worth it.  But the little critters are amazing, plastered all over the roof of the caves.  Spectacular to see.  They herded us into this boat and we got to see the glowworms in all their glory while sitting on water in the dark.  Just like stars.

We then drove off to Rotorua where we will spend the next 2 nights at the East West Boutique Apartments.  The hosts are really nice and left us with a breakfast "care package" along with many comforts of home.  We just grabbed a pizza at a place within walking distance, along with a bottle of wine, and crashed for some much-needed rest for the night.  No deadline for the morning, so a nice sleep is in order.