Horses and Adventure Rides

The word of the day is "milk". After months of not drinking any milk, we all enjoyed cold delicious milk with breakfast. We have a kitchenette in our hotel room and AD made eggs for he and myself. It was great.

Heading out for the day we went to a stables for AD to go horseback riding. He enjoyed a 30 minute ride throughout a hilly pasture and is dying to go again. After that he went for a ride on four wheeler around a set track. The weather was not as warm as we'd hoped so it necessitated our return to the hotel for warmer clothes.

Our next stop was at the Skyline Sky Rides Park. You take a gondola up the hillside to a park that has several adventure rides. The one we chose was the luge run. What a blast!! You sit in a small sled, with hand controlled break system in front of you and travel down one of three courses that increase in difficulty. We tried all three. AD and I would have spent the day going down again and again if we'd had our way. But I suppose three times for TD and I and four for AD is enough.

Back to the room for homework and research into potential stops in the North Island took up the rest of the afternoon. After that we went for a walk in the Government Gardens and along the shore line of the Lake Rotorua. The gardens house an early 1900's bath house and the Blue Bath built in 1930 along with beautiful flower beds, lawn bowling, and some thermal vents. It's a wonderful place to walk around.

Having a kitchenette is so nice. We enjoyed salads with our left over chicken, fresh strawberries, cucumber and carrots. Jetlag still bothers us so it was off to bed at 9:30.

Nov. 15th - Limestone caves in Waitomo - by DW

The words for the day are "glow little glow worm glow". We traveled to the city of Waitomo, which is a two hour drive west from Rotorua. In Waitomo there are limestone caves which have glowworms. Another great adventure. The caves were beautifully illuminated showing caverns filled with stalagmites and stalactites. Our tour culminated with a boat trip through the pitch black caves with thousands of green glowworms lighting the ceiling.

Glowworms are the larval stage of the fungus gnat. The cocoon houses a small fly that once born lives for two days. The tip of the cocoon glows with a green light to attract bugs to the antennas that hang from the sacks and are made of spider web type material. Bugs fly toward the light searching for a way out of the darkness. They get caught in the strings and become that nights dinner. Once hatched these gnats live only a couple of days and produce about 100 eggs in that time period. These insects are found only in New Zealand and Australia.

The New Zealand countryside is rolling and very green. Spring flowers and trees line the countryside adding to it's lush appearance. We drove by more cows and sheep than you could count. The roads twist and turn with a speed limit of 100 Km. The skies threatened rain all afternoon. We ate take out in our hotel room and called family with our new phone card. Finally a cheap way to call home.

AD Journal

My Mom, Dad and I went to skyline skyrides in Rotorua, New Zealand. At the park we road the luge tracks. They had three different track levels, which were beginner, intermediate, and advanced. In the advanced they had a hill with a 30 foot drop. We each did the track three times. It was a lot of fun.

In the morning I went horse back riding. A nice lady took me for a 30 minute ride. She took me out in a pasture. I saw about 100 cows. The horse she was on was a little stubborn. After that I went on a four wheeler for about 20 minutes. It was so small that it couldn't make it up the hill. On both the rides I went longer than they should have.

New Zealand

New Zealand

Rotorua and Waitomo

Nov. 14th - Horses and Adventure Rides

Nov. 15th - Limestone caves in Waitomo - by DW

New Zealand