What a Relief!

Day 30 - Written by Kim on Friday October 15, 2010 in Nelson, New Zealand – South Island

One month down, six more to go!  I can’t believe how quickly our first month of travel has gone by.  I sure hope the next six don’t pass by as quickly.  To end our first month, we have survived yet another great adventure, another long drive, another ferry crossing, and have made a big decision in regard to our trip, one that we think will be for the better.  Such a relief!  Let me fill you in.

Our great adventure took place in Waitomo, which is where we headed after Thanksgiving weekend in Rotorua.  Waitomo is famous for their caves, and in particular the glow worm spectacles within the caves.  We headed there to check them out, but didn’t think wandering around in dark, cold, creepy caves looking at glow worms was extreme enough.  So, we opted for the “Rap, Raft & Rock” option.  Essentially we got to ‘rap’pel down 27 meters into the cave, we got to 'black water raft’ down a portion of the cave on rubber tubes in complete darkness, and then we ‘rock’ climbed back up the 27 meters at the end.  We also got to see PLENTY of glow worms and learn a lot about both them, and the cave we were in.  For those of you who don’t know, glow worms are actually yucky little things.  For all those 80’s children and their parents, you probably have a glamorized vision of glow worms preferring to think of the cute, cuddly, glow-in-the-dark toy with a smile on it’s face that we grew up with, rather than the slimy maggot it actually is.  Apparently whoever first discovered and named the glow worm opted to use “worm” rather than “maggot”, probably because they thought it painted a prettier picture, and they were right!   However, the glow worm is actually a maggot.  The “worm” stage is just one of three stages in their life.  When looking at the glow worms close up, they are actually transparent.  If they’ve eaten recently, you can see their meal!  They catch their meal similarly to spiders.  They create long, shiny, sticky strings that hang from their resting place.  They admit light to attract bugs, which get caught in their sticky creations.  The glow worm then uses its mouth to draw the sticky string, along with the bug, inside to it’s belly!  Also interestingly, they have a mouth, but they don’t have anything at the other end.  So, once filled up, they begin the next process of their life which is to cocoon itself and turn into a bug which is sort of a mix between a large mosquito and a house fly.  They only live for 2-5 days in bug form and them their life cycle is officially over.  Who knew!  Glow worms are both fascinating and icky.  I think I’ll continue to think of my cute and cuddly toy as a child :)  Anyway, it was a relief to survive yet another great adventure here in NZ.  Here are some pictures of our caving adventures...

Geared up, ready to go... and looking stylish, too!

Our crew ready to rappel... me first!

There's no time like the present...

Down we go....

Aus' turn...

 Through the rays you can see people at the bottom of the 27metre drop...

A look from the bottom, up.....

Enjoying the ride...

If you look carefully you can see the glow worms beaming on the cave roof all above us...

An upclose look at a glow worm and his trap...

Other than glow worms, we saw many eels...  *shiver*  Who could love that mug?

Making my way through a tight passageway...(what they call a "squeeze")

Austin also makes it through...

Our rock climb back up to the sunlight...

I made it!  If you look behind to the left you can see Aus and his white rubber boots waiting to make the climb...

After our “Rap, Raft and Rock” adventure we hit the road for a long, but necessary, 6 hour drive south to the capital of Wellington where we had our ferry booked to travel to the south island.  We chose to basically skip the southern portion of the north island due to perceived time constraints, as our booked flight for the 22nd was fast approaching.  We had to cover a lot of ground because we had an Inter-Islander ferry crossing booked for early the next morning.  We made the drive in good time and found a place to park Dexter and prepared for our early morning excursion to cross from the north island to the infamous south island.   Here are some pictures from our beautiful 6 hour drive...

All the little white specs... all sheep!

The road ahead...

Aus getting some snaps of the pretty little coastal town...

The lush, green hills have a natural "stairway" and we see sheep at all levels... kinda neat!

The morning ferry crossing, of course, became quite the fiasco.  When travelling it’s almost expected that things can’t go off without a hitch.  What was supposed to be a bonus - offered to us with our Spaceship rental, was a complimentary ferry crossing.  This of course turned into a disaster rather than any sort of bonus.  To make things complicated, in order to get your complementary ferry crossing, you had to have the Spaceship company book the ferry crossing for you.  Another catch was that they paid for the Spaceship to cross, but not for the people.  So, we had to again allow Spaceships to charge our credit card to pay for us to travel alongside our Spaceship on the ferry.  It gets better.  The girl on the other end of the phone seemed frazzled at the time, and that should have been another indicator that disaster was impending... but instead we took the booking reference number she provided and trusted that when we showed up as the ferry terminal at 7am, we’d be sorted.  Think again.  We waited in a long line of cars to show the guy checking us in a booking reference number he didn’t recognize.  There was both not enough numbers, and it didn’t start the way their booking numbers do.  Here we go!  He asked us to pull off to the side and wait until the line subsided, and then he would help us figure out our dilemma.  We did as we were told.  We tried to call Spaceships, but of course, their office wasn’t open yet.   We went back to the guy on foot and had him look up the booking by both of our surnames, but that also turned up nothing.  We resided to the fact that the frazzle-brained booker had made some sort of error and we rushed to the ticket counter at the departures building with hopes of buying a last minute car spot.  We were in luck!  An additional $230 bucks got us and the Spaceship on the ferry.  It was a relief to know we weren’t going to waste our day, but we were beyond annoyed with the Spaceship company.  To make matters worse, while waiting to board the ferry after having bought our new tickets, we got a call on our borrowed mobile phone from the BlueBridge Ferry, wondering if we were going to be there to board their 8am ferry that morning.  HUH?!?  Ya, you guessed it... there was a second ferry company.  The lovely, frazzle-brained booking girl from Spaceship forgot to mention this small, but extremely important detail.  For those of you who have been to NZ, you know that there is one very large and well-known ferry company that is well-signed for miles and miles coming into Wellington, The Inter-Islander Ferry.  However, there is also a MUCH smaller and MUCH less known ferry called BlueBridge.  We are now very familiar with this fact.  Unfortunately with our new non-refundable ticket, and at 7:50am with only 10 minutes until departure, we had to tell BlueBridge Ferry that we would not be taking their ferry, after begging only slightly for a refund of the money Spaceships had paid them, so we could then seek that money back from Spaceships.  No such luck.  That matter was to-be-continued with Spaceships.  The good news is, and the cause for relief, was that we did make it over to the south island on the day we planned, just not in the way we planned.  I think from here on out we’ll stick to booking our own travel arrangements... we’re much more reliable.

Once we arrived on the south island, we had some big decisions to make – what to do with the little time we had left.  We drove two hours from Picton, where the ferry arrives, up the coast to Nelson, which is on the way to Abel Tasman National Park – one of our must-visit places while on the south island.  Our problem however was that it was now the 14^th, and with our flight booked to Australia on the 22^nd, we were feeling a time crunch.  We really wanted to spend a few days hiking and camping in the park, but that meant much less time to discover and explore the south island.  We would have never booked our outgoing flight to Australia, had it not been required on entry.  But, our reality was that we had to make a decision when to leave New Zealand much before we were prepared to know when that would be.   We decided to go ahead with our camping/hiking plans for Abel Tasman National Park, and we also decided to go ahead with our plan to take our time to discover and explore all of NZ’s south island.  Essentially, our decision was one that involves likely just not taking our scheduled flights to Australia on the 22^nd, and instead planning to book new ones later on when we know we are done exploring and doing all we want to do in New Zealand.  A big decision financially as the flights we had are non-refundable, but an easy one when you look at the big picture.  Again, knowing we can take our time to do and see all we want has been a huge relief and has lifted a lot of weight off our shoulders.  We had been feeling stress from the time crunch and overwhelmed with all the ground we still wanted to cover.  Now we feel much more relaxed.  Today we’re spending our time preparing for our Abel Tasman camping/hiking excursion, which will involve renting equipment, booking space in sleeping huts along the trail, and arranging a water taxi to pick us up at the north end of our journey... all very exciting!   Stay tuned and in another 5-7 days I’m sure you’ll be reading and seeing pictures from that voyage.

Until next time!

Cheers,
The Knotty Travellers