Land of the Long White Cloud

Just a quick post to let you all know where I am and how things are going etc. Auckland wasn't, literally, anything to write home about, apart from maybe a trip to Wieheke Island where I found a lovely beach and lazed in the sun for a couple of hours. It's also known for its vineyards, but I didn't have the time to venture that way. Sorry.

Since leaving Auckland I've been on the Kiwi Experience bus, a touring company which I soon found has a reputation for boisterous and loutish behaviour. I was expecting to step on to the bus and be violently greeted by a group of pissed up 18 year olds. Thankfully this hasn't been the case, everyone is a good laugh and I'm having a whale of a time. It's much more casual than my American tour, and less intimate. It's a hop-on / hop-off service, so the group changes and shifts quite regularly - chances are I won't be with the same people for the whole two weeks that I'm taking part.

Last night we visited a Maori village, where they greeted us traditionally, played us songs, made us a delicious dinner and even performed the Haka. It was a great experience, but felt much less personal than the equivalent with the Navajo in Monument Valley, as many other groups from other tours had joined our own.

Today I took part in an activity in Ruakuri Cave, following a river through the caves on both foot and on a tube - a sort-of rubber tyre that you sit in as you float with the current. Ruakuri is well known for its glow worms, and we all switched our headlamps off as we bobbed downstream, revealing the bright green spots that dangled above our heads. It was an awesome sight, and I'm much more pleased that I took part in that and not the alternative, which was to abseil in to the caves and then dangle on a zip wire in to the caverns. It's definitely not because I'm a wimp.