02 April, 2006

We arrived in Auckland before dawn and were forced off the ship at gunpoint……Ok, maybe not at gunpoint, but we were not happy to be leaving. The twelve days on the ship passed much too quickly and we would have liked to stayed onboard a few more days. But, disembarkation was a breeze. This may have been the best disembarkation that I have ever seen. Both the Princess people and the Auckland Cruise Terminal people really had their act together and it went very smoothly. I’m sure our experience was helped by the fact that we were in an early disembarkation group and got to leave the ship in the first 30 minutes before the terminal became a seething mass of confused tourists….but still it was very well run.

We had booked an independent tour for our first day in Auckland (Southern Cross Tours hosted by Don Cater). Don was waiting for us at the terminal when we cleared customs. For a small group (8 people) we had a remarkable amount of luggage and Don able to shuttle us and our luggage to the hotel to put the luggage in storage before starting out on the tour. While New Zealand is not a large country it was still necessary to cover a lot of distance to get to our main attraction of the day….the Waitomo Glowworm Caves…..and Don filled the 2-3 hour drive with wit and wisdom about New Zealanders and their history. Along the way we learned about One Tree Mountain….so named because there was one single, lone tree on the summit….the name became a bit out of date when a Maori activist took a chain saw to the tree. Hence forth the locals began calling it None Tree Mountain. The obvious solution….to plant another tree on the mountain….became mired in bureaucracy when the local government couldn’t agree on what type of a tree to plant. Things escalated and a deadlock developed that has lasted more than 5 years….they still can’t agree to plant a tree. A local TV personality decided to take matters into his own hands and he went onto the mountain and planted a native tree himself. When the authorities found out they had the tree ripped out…..it wasn’t an officially approved tree….and the stalemate continues. It sounds a lot like Texas politics.

The first stop on our tour was at “The Shearing Shed”….but not to watch that staple of Australian and New Zealand culture….a sheep shearing; no we were there for a rabbit shearing. As lame as this sounds, it is really quite interesting and more than a bit amusing. I’m running a little short of time now so I’ll have to save any further embellishment about the rabbit shearing until later.

The main attraction of the day was a visit to the Waitomo Glowworm Caves. As an independent tour we were able to get into a smaller, less visited section of the caves. It was pretty neat…..you walk down through the cave system until you reach an underground river. At this point you get into a small inflatable boat and, in near total darkness float down the river under a million tons of solid rock. I say ‘near total’ darkness because as you go further down the river you notice small glowing points of light on the ceiling of the cave. These are the Glowworms….small larva of a type of fly…..that produce a bioluminescence to attract other insects into their single strand of web that catches the other insects like a spider web. You just have to see it to believe it….or understand the attraction….but the further you go down the river the higher the density of the Glowworms. The ceiling, in the dark cave, looks like a starry night. And sections look like the brightest part of the Milky Way. Once again, time doesn’t permit a proper description of this tour, but it really was one of the highlights of the trip….right up there with Ayer’s Rock and the Fiordlands.  

Note: for those of you wishing to do tours in the Auckland/Tauranga area Don Cater, who organized our tour can be contacted at:

cater.da@xtra.co.nz

Note: the Glowworm section of the tour was hosted by Peter Chandler of Spellbound Tours:

……..but, sadly, tomorrow we have to leave New Zealand and head back home….and I have a lot of final packing to do before bed this evening, so I’ll post a few pictures and save a longer description for some other time.