Day 4: Waitomo Caves

Sept 24th

Unfortunately, the smell of puke wasn't all I had to deal with through the night. Logan was also, apparently, very constipated :( and woke up about 2:30am screaming in pain, trying to push his poop out (poor little guy). When he finally did poop, he immediately fell back to sleep, turning around with his BUTT in my face. NICE.

It was a rough night, and Logan decided to wake up at 5:30am - for good. *sigh* I was REALLY tired. But, since we were in a small cabin and everyone else was still snoozing, we walked out onto the porch to see the early dawn over this huge valley (turns out our cabin had a pretty neat view, we just didn't know it since it had been so dark when we got in the night before).


We all got a late start to the day since Logan and I napped from about 8-9am while everyone else showered and got ready. While trying to nap, I actually overheard Jon tell Eric and Jill that he was "useless without my wife" - something I'll make sure to store in my memory bank and remind him of later in life. ;-) I decided these cabins were okay, but not as great as the cottages we stayed in Hahei. Mostly, they were just TOO far away from town and the caves, which was the only real reason we spent the night in this area.


At any rate, we checked out of the cabins and took off to tour the famous Waitomo Caves. I felt like the tour guide really rushed us through the entire tour (there were packs of tourists before us and behind us so I guess that was part of the reason), however the glow worms we got to see at the very end of the tour were AWESOME! Very surreal and fantastical. :)

We bought tickets to tour two different caves, and the 2nd cave was really pretty (although still not as cool as the Carlsbad Caverns, IMHO), but more importantly, we could take photos (the first tour didn't allow photography) and the tour guide was extremely patient for our group of four as we hung back and stayed a long time to see and take pictures of every little thing. Luckily, Logan slept for a good part of both tours (particularly during the glow worms part, which would have been bad if he were awake and decided to scream, since apparently the glow worms DO NOT like noise....)

Oh! And we got to see a real live cave weta in the 2nd cave! :)

We stopped for a little pizza for lunch. Their pizza tends to be more like Italian pizza - super thin with just a smattering of veggies/meat. Mine had pumpkin on it - not my favorite for pizza, but oh well. I was slowly learning that Kiwis think all vegetarians eat are pumpkins and mushroom risotto. ;-)

We had a nice little drive to Rotorua - our next stop. Logan finally fell asleep for part of the drive, so I decided to take a nap myself. :) Everyone warned me that the town of Rotorua STINKS like sulfur, due to the natural bubbling sulfuric geyers in and around town. However, I didn't think it smelled that bad actually. In fact, I hardly noticed it at all when we got into town - the smell seems to come and go - but even at its strongest, it just smelled like eggs to me. Nothing that awful.

The Robertson House B&B we stayed at was AWESOME (one of my favorite places of the whole trip). It is a beautifully restored old Victorian home. We had the house to ourselves the first night which was a nice treat. I think Logan enjoyed it too, since he was free to crawl and roam the entire house, getting some of his excess energy out.

We had free Internet access, but all be darned if it was as SLOW AS MOLASSES. But honestly, I didn't have the time to email - I was either keeping an eye on Logan, or taking advantage of the downtime and sleeping myself! ;-)

The owner (John) was SUPER friendly and chatty (great for Jon!). He gave us a great recommendation on where to eat for dinner that night, as well as some ideas on what to see and do the following day. He also had a humongous beautiful Samoyed dog (Loki) who was very friendly and didn't mind Logan crawling all over him (bonus!).


So, we settled in and then headed downtown to a local restaurant called The Fat Dog Cafe (when I looked back at my notes, it turns out our friends Brook and Lisa had also suggested this place before we had left!). Delicious food and a fun vibrant atmosphere! Logan was very loud and tired so Jon and I took turns walking him around the neighborhood while the other ate dinner.

Once he was asleep, Logan had a much better night. He fell asleep in bed with us and then Jon moved him to his tent (the B&B didn't have any cribs) before the two of us snuggled up to sleep ourselves.