weekend 'o fun!

What a fun weekend!!
So we had our first visitor, lovely Amy, for whom the stop in NZ was just a tiny portion of her super fun trip to Oz, NZ, and Fiji! Yay. Aim got to Hawera with Josh on Thursday night (18Feb), and stopped to go dam dropping, then came and picked me up, and we headed out to the beach closest to town with the pretty black sand.

Pretty day!


Gorgeous views!
Ahhh, prom picture.
Friday Josh and Amy went boogie boarding, and I went to...wait for it...it's super exciting...WORK! heehee. then I got done in the early afternoon and we headed north to Waitomo.

Josh finds a stout Dew.

So when a sign on the side of the road says 'BEER!' you stop, right? :) This is Mike's Organic Brewery, with the lovely barman who gave us tastes of yummy beer. Yet another reason to come and visit.

Then we were passing this fabulous beachy area, with great big waves...so I whipped a quick louie and pulled over to play in the waves for a moment. AHHH-MAZING!!


Ohhh, look at the pretty wave. Josh is wishing for his surfboard.

More pretty black sand.
Then we got to Waitomo, which is where the glow worm caves are. Yup, you read that right--glow worms! (And it's not the stuffed animal kind.) Josh got us a B&B--but not just any B&B, this was an ostrich farm B&B!! (Note: they are not very nice.) The B&B also had mini horses and donkeys.

We took a little tour, which took us into one of the cow paddocks to look at the ostriches that were adjoining it in the next paddock, and every time we looked up the cows were closer...and closer....and closer.... it was like children of the corn!
Apparently cows are curious.
And Amy is the cow whisperer.

Ohhh! Baby cow!!!

After our fab farm tour, we went to the late night cave tour, which was, simply put, amazing.
This is what the glow worms actually are (maggots, in layman's terms)

We went into the caves with our cool guide, and she sang to us in the part of the cave called the Cathedral...it has great acoustics, and they've actually done concerts there. Then we got to go in a boat (the river runs through the caves) and look at all the glow worms on the ceiling and the walls. So pretty! It looks like stars. We met some lovely canadians on our tour, who told us about a trail that you can go on and see glow worms in nature...so we invited ourselves! I borrowed one of their headlamps, and Josh and Aim used their flashlight app. Damn apps.

Woke up bright and early to go to Taupo. Glorious misty-ness!

Mooo.
Then we got to Taupo and stopped at the geo thermal area called Craters of the Moon. Because of the name, I was really expecting moon like landscape. Turns out some shrubby scrappy plants still grow in super hot ground. :)

This is boiling mud. Really.

Then we got into Taupo and stopped at the Body Art festival. There was some kick ass art!


Also stopped at Huka (means foam in Maori) Falls--a very wide river gets forced into a 35 foot channel (if I remember correctly), and actually is used for energy production too.


Then we went skydiving. It was fun. :)

Scenery while falling.


Us after the jump.


That night we stayed in Taupo, and headed to Napier in the morning. That's when we found out that there wasn't one petrol station between the towns...and they're two hours apart! Oops.
Napier is the Art Deco capital of the world. Or at least of New Zealand. There was a big old earthquake there in the 1930s, and when they rebuilt, it was all in Art Deco style. So every year they have an Art Deco weekend, which was awesomely coordinated with our trip! They were having soap box derby races, and art deco style dress is encouraged. FUN!!!

He's so cute.

And so are they.

This was a sign outside one of the bars. I thought it was funny.

And then came the wine tasting! We rented bikes and did a little tour of a bunch of wineries, a chocolate shop, and a beer/cider tasting place. Awesome!

Dionne Warrick wine???

Mission Estate is NZ's oldest vineyard/winery.

Yay for foggy scenery.
Hurleyville!!!

Such a pretty mountain! Have I mentioned yet that they used Taranaki during the filming of the last samurai cause it looks like mt fuji. Cool.

Pretty New Plymouth, just before we dropped Aim off at the airport. sad....
I like to call these the Guinness cows. Note the creamy top and dark brown bottom. Slainte!
A very good time, all in all.