Whangarei Falls, Abby Caves

Trip Start Oct 11, 2010
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Trip End Apr 18, 2011


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Flag of New Zealand  , North Island,
Saturday, March 5, 2011

The second day started by visiting the Whangarei Falls, which was a beautiful little waterfall not too far from the cabin we stayed in. Then we headed to Abby Caves. This cave network was a hidden gem, because few tourist wondered out this way, and it was in no way commercialized. After a short hike through the meadows we reached some rock formations that led into different caverns. This was a very rugged experience for us, because not only were we on our own, but it was raining also adding a mud aspect to the adventure. After climbing down a few meters we found an underwater stream that I chose to climb around for a hundred meters and Melissa waded through. When we shut off our lights we were surrounded by small constellations of glow worms. It looked like little blue specs on the cave's ceiling and was an amazing site.

We headed out giving Melissa her first turn at the wheel. We drove 1.2 hours only to find ourselves already on the other side of the island’s  Northern section. Heading North ahead of schedule we saw Tane Mahuta the largest tree on the Whari tree on the island measuring over 52 m around! It was smaller than the giant Sequoias we saw last year in California; however, this tree was surrounded by smaller trees and bush making it tower over everything around it. This gave it a very majestic effect. Iowa is much less rural than this part of New Zealand with one gas station for every three towns and restaurants closing at 4pm on Saturday nights. We bought gas for the first time, and it was at a whopping $9 a gallon! We were reluctant to even get some because the gas station closed in ten minutes 7pm. We decided to be a little bold this night and tried our luck sleeping in the car. Our little dandy "the cozy kiwi" as we have named it, has seats that fold all the way down into two miniature beds. We drove into a scenic outlook and parked in between two other vans that had the same idea and we set up camp.
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