Wellington, Ferry Ride and Caverafting…
After our train ride to Wellington from Auckland (12 hour ride, 700 kilometers or so) - we made it to our hostel in Wellington and went out to find a bite to eat. Neither of us found Wellington very spectacular - especially in the evening on Boxing Day, pretty much everything was closed, and we didn't really have time to explore the place. Our hostel was in the downtown area, and by the time we arrived we were off hunting for some food. Ended up having some great Nachos and stuff at a sports bar, and then had a great coffee and some dessert at this cool little coffee shop called Espressoholic. Our kinda place (especially Dan's).
So we slept, and basically first thing in the morning made it over to the InterIslander ferry terminal where we jumped on for a gorgeous three hour ferry ride over to the South Island. We couldn't have had better weather, which was great. The ferry ride reminded me a lot of the Vancouver-Victoria ferry, except longer. Here are a couple shots we took from the way over.
Once we arrived at the other side, it took about 45 minutes for our luggage to come out on the luggage rack, which was what we like to call a huge pain in the arse. After that, a rather unorthodox rental car pickup (not worth detailing) and we were on our way to Westport. Unfortunately we didn't have time to make it up to Nelson or Abel Tasman, it just wasn't in the books.
The drive from Picton (where the ferry arrives) to Westport is absolutely great. Stunning scenery and forests and mountains, which we both thoroughly enjoyed. Can't say much for Westport really - by the time we arrived we managed to get to a grocery store to get some milk and a Hokey Pokey ice cream cone, but other than that, it was sleep time. All good - cuz the next morning we were off to do Underworld Rafting
The cave rafting experience was absolutely awesome. We basically got driven a little ways into the forest, then hopped on a little train to go further into the forest. They suited us up with fully body wetsuits, bootys, gloves, and those geeky helmets with the lights on them, and we were off on a bit more of a hike through the forest until we got to the entrance of the cave.
Walking through the cave was quite an awesome experience. I've never been in a "real" cave like that - where you are actually "deep in the earth" so to speak. Unfortunately Gandalf wasn't with us, but fortunately we didn't run into any Balrogs or Orcs.
Here are some pictures from inside the cave, wonderfully taken by our guide and made available to us from their web site:
Once we had found the water in the cave, our guide got us all linked up into a line, turned off all the lights, and started to pull us through the cave in the dark. This is when things got really spectacular. As we came out from under this ledge, the cave exploded into a blue-green light put-off as energy by 1/2 million glowworms who had made the cave ceiling their home. Unfortunately no pictures of this - you have to see it to believe it though. Really amazing.
Once through that part of the cave, it was out to the river for a few small rapids and a nice ride down the river!
That was probably one of our best experiences in NZ - but there were a lot of them, so it's hard to really differentiate. After our cave rafting time we immediately headed out to spend the afternoon driving down to Franz Josef Glacier.
Pictures and blog entry to follow! We promise!
