Friday July 9th

3 oC and moving up to a high of 12 oC as we drove north.

Five hours back to Auckland but no hurry on us. The drive was very picturesque and we stopped at Kia Café for lunch and eat the most wonderful food, read the paper and crashed for an hour and a half. About twenty minutes later we stopped again at the glow worm caves. I stopped at the local I-Sight and was wondering why that lady in the parallel queue was smiling at me: turns out that we sat beside her on the flight from Melbourne. A teacher attending conference-the Aussie teachers seem to head to New Zealand a lot for conferences. Anyway, this is where I tell you that we joined her family and spent the day together, swapped phone numbers and email addresses and promised to meet again some time in the future. But we didn’t! Just a quick ‘hello’ followed but ‘fancy meeting you here’ and we were both on our way. I don’t even know her name.
The tour of the caves was very interesting, better then Alliwee Caves at home and that is saying something. The narrow passageways eventually open up to a massive cavern and I felt like singing-but I didn’t. The guide even invited any of us to and I was going to sing ‘A Mhuire Mháthair’ which would have been very appropriate as it is a Maori tune, but I chickened out. Next time! We exited the caves through the river’s exit and observed the glow worms on the roof of the cave. The whole experience surpassed my expectations and the remainder of the journey to Auckland passed quickly due to the feelgood factor of very pleasant days activities. Leonard had lent us his car which was a great bonus.