Since I was a little rushed yesterday, let me mention a few more things about our day:

It was raining steadily as the ship pulled into port….and continued throughout the day into the early evening. Which made the efficiency of the disembarkation and the clearing of customs all that more welcome. Before starting our tour we made our way to the Langham Hotel to drop off luggage. Since it was early morning the rooms were not yet ready, but Princess did have a private check-in area for us and we got our initial transfer information while we stored our bags.

Don Cater, our tour guide for the day, deserves a great deal of praise for handling all our luggage logistics and transporting us around the North Island under less than perfect conditions. Luckily for us, most of the activities for the day were indoors or underground so the weather didn’t hamper the tour…but I’m sure it made life more difficult for Don as he shuttled us around for the day and tried to keep us dry and entertained. As I mentioned yesterday, Don was a fountain of knowledge about New Zealand geography, culture and history. I won’t try to go into some of his stories now, because I’m rushing against the clock again and have to check out of the hotel shortly, but they were very entertaining.

(I’m really telling the truth about being under time pressure…..the housekeeper has been by knocking on the door three times wanting to get us out of the room so they can get it ready for the next customer…..but we still have a few more minutes until check-out time and I’m holding out until I can post this)

I also gave only the shortest description of the Glowworm Cave Tour, but that was only because of a lack of time. It truly was the highlight of the last several days in New Zealand. Rafting through an underground river and looking up to see hundreds of thousands of tiny blue and white lights is awe-inspiring. And the fact that we could do it as a small group of 10-12 people instead of as part of a 40-60 person tour group was very nice. Thanks again to Peter Chandler of Spellbound Limited for the great day.

……..OK, housekeeping just came by again….they are very determined people here…..so I’m going to stop and post this and I’ll finish up any other comments once we get home.