Harry Wakatipu, Cave Swimming and Surfers

24-27 Jun 08
Takapuna Beach Holiday Park

After Great Barrier we spent several nights in a holiday park in Takapuna beach – on the North Shore of Auckland. Mainly we used the time to catch up on email, run errands, and hide from the horrible gales that kept blowing through every day! Literally, every time we decided to venture out for a walk on the beach or in town, the blue sky would rapidly cloud up and start pouring rain!

We did manage to go down to Devonport, which is a little village just north across the harbor from downtown Auckland (and just south of Takapuna). It's a somewhat posh touristy shopping area but it has one saving grace, several EXCELLENT used book stores. Amazingly we resisted most, and only bought a cheap SF short story collection. Also of note, this is when we broke down and purchased a power lead (or extension cable) so that we could hook up to the power points at holiday parks and have electricity in the van. The van itself isn't wired, but we feed the cable in through the window and can plug in a heater and our motley assortment of electronics :)

And last but not least, this is where we befriended an English couple about our age, Jen and James, who gave us lots of good suggestions of things to see further south.



28Jun08
Takapuna to Port Waikato

Today we finally rousted ourselves out of Takapuna, stopped for a quick lunch of fish and chips in Devonport, and then drove south of Auckland and west to the coast – stopping for the night in a holiday park in the little village of Port Waikato. We had the place to ourselves and the bathrooms had bad classic hits on the radio :)

29Jun08
Port Waikato to Raglan, via Nikau Cave

As we left the holiday park this morning, the owner called ahead to Nikau Cave for us, but didn't get through (turns out they had a power outage) and recommended we stop at a local beach along the way. The beaches in this area are apparently renowned for good surfing...



We took a back road near the coast down to Nikau Cave (heartily recommended by Jen and James), driving through some fantastic limestone outcrops and formations and very scenic countryside. According to the map we drove past Mt Weathertop from LOTR, but we didn't really notice it!



At one point we stopped on a hilltop to get out and photograph the view. As soon as we got out of the van, a big horse came galloping across his pasture straight for us! I've never seen a horse so eager for company – for a second I thought he was going to jump the fence, but he skidded to a halt and proceed to beg :) I dubbed him Harry Wakatipu (the name of a horse in stories by a NZ author named Jack Lasenby.)







Harry was very persistent, so we scrounged an old carrot out of the van (it's convenient to have your whole kitchen with you!) But the carrot was too old or Harry was just too picky because he wouldn't eat it. He did accept copious patting though.



Next stop Nikau Cave. This is a great little glowworm cave on private land with tours run by the family that farms the area above it. It's much less advertised and much more personal than the famous glowworm caves of Waitomo to the south. So, wondering what a glowworm is by now?? Of course you are! Glowworms are the larvae stage of the glamorous fungus gnat. These tiny larvae live in wet caves and weave sticky threads that hang down from the cave ceiling. To entice bugs into their webs, the larvae glow faintly, which you can see in the cave.

For our tour of the cave we were warned that we'd get very wet (and cold), so we changed into our best caving attire... old t-shirt and fleece jacket, shorts with rain pants on top, and socks and chacos – topped off with a very fashionable hard hat. Our tour guide was the son of the owner, and it was only the two of us plus the guide's sister-in-law and her friend who were visiting for the weekend. Like I said, very low-key :)

To get to the cave we walk a short distance across the sheep pasture to a limestone outcrop with a creek running out of it. We enter the cave and proceed to follow the stream for the length of the cave, frequently walking in the stream itself, since it has rained recently and the stream is about as high as it can be before they have to stop the tours. The limestone cave isn't a particularly formation-rich cave, but it is thrilling none the less, and every once and while the tunnel would open into a larger cavity and we would all turn off our lights and look up at the constellation of glowworm lights. The glowworms really remind you of stars in the night sky and give you a strange perception of the volume and shape of the cave that you obviously wouldn't have otherwise.

About halfway through we reach a very narrow section that requires us to slide down a rabbit hole and crawl on our stomachs for about twenty feet. What fun!! And this section was flooded with the swollen stream so that you had to let your flashlight float on the water in front of you as you shimmied along on your elbows and stomach, just barely able to keep your mouth above the water line! It was freezing cold, but really exciting. After that we continued to follow the stream, no more really tight spaces, and eventually came out the other side of the hill after about an hour and half underground.

Then it was back to the cafe/ticket office where we showered and changed into dry clothes. Oh, and on the way back Justin talked to the guide about farming in NZ.

After cleaning up, we went inside the cafe and had a huge pot of tea while sitting by the fire and chatting with the family, the sister-in-law and friend about everything from politics to law. (The two girls were law students in Wellington.)

Needless to say, we really enjoyed our visit to Nikau Cave :)

After we finally left, we drove further south to the small coastal town of Raglan and stayed at a holiday park overrun by a group of uber-cool surfers from Canada, California and Brazil. They found us boring and vice versa. Oh well...

photoset