Tag Archives: boat ride

Part 5 – Glow-in-the-Dark

It’s been a while since the last post – hasn’t it? It is a sign of how this trip is different in a few ways from our usual. Not at this point yet, but later. There is a lot of work, and at the times where we are not working, we are trying to absorb as much of the moment as we can. And so, photos and blogging falls to the wayside a little bit.

This is still the time to absorb. We have switch to travel mode – planning ahead a day or two and trying to enjoy ourselves as much as possible.

The Waitomo Caves were really high up on the list of things that I wanted to show the kids. Since they are too small for Black Water Rafting, we booked a tour through Aranui cave which is a walking tour with a boat ride at the end. Glow worms really like wet environments.

Thus, the tour was the first thing we did today. It was a big hit with the kids, gliding through the dark in a boat with a starry sky above us. It was just one cave though and the boat ride was over quickly.

We left Waitomo and drove towards Taupo and Wai-o-tapu, the next big item on our “what to show the kids” list. Looking for a lunch stop and something to do over midday, we came across Te Waihou Blue Springs in Waikato in the lonely planet. A spring, a nice walkway…we crosschecked it with a NZ website which told us that the walk is closed but you can still get to the river at one side of it. We decided to try it anyway. It turned out to be the side of the river, where all the locals go swimming on hot days. Today was such a day and it was well frequented. The locals also jumped in from a fallen tree trunk. The water was freezing cold, not even the kids wanted to go swimming. Cooling down our feet was also lovely though. We stayed for much longer than we had anticipated and took the arrival of a whole class of teenagers on an excursion organised by their marae as our clue to bow out. It probably would have gotten energy-ladden as the young, mostly men, started doing push-ups before jumping into the water. It was super cool to see them and to hear them all speak te reo with each other. Our kids helped with the counting as far as they knew the numbers.

We stayed at another freedom camp that night and finally had the BBQ that the AoE was so looking forward to. Lake Okaro was right next to us.

The next day, we started with the Lady Knox geyser eruption at 10am. It is made to erupt every day at the same time. Wai-o-tapu was great (again) and both kids did an exceptionally good job with walking. We went all the way to the green lake.

In the afternoon, we stopped at Lake Taupo for a nap (Flo) and some playtime at the waterfront before heading east. Our original plan of taking the desert road and stopping at the volcanoes was thwarted by a two-month closure of state highway 1 for maintenance. So we had to go around and decided to head towards Napier. Somewhere along the road to Napier, there was the Kaweka Forest Park with a doc campsite within.

It was a campsite right in the forest, even without reception. Unfortunately, it was raining slightly but Number 3 used the time to draw a fantastic picture of our view of NZ bush.

Day 19 – On the rocks and in the lake

As a last hurray for Meteora, we headed to the Monastery of St. Barbara of Roussanou. At least one of the monasteries deserved to be visited. For this one, housing nuns, I was required to wear a skirt. They were handed out at the entrance.

Afterwards, we drove all the way to Ioannina for lunch. Unfortunately, it was about 2pm when we finally arrived at the taverna and everybody was really hungry. Luckily, the buffet style place had something on offer for everyone.

Afterwards, we explored Ioannina, the Municipal Ethnographic Museum and took a boat ride to Ioannina Island in the middle of the lake as a surprise for the kids.

We camped right in town so we could have an early start into the mountains of Zagori tomorrow.

Good morning Meteora! How are you today? Still sunny I see.

Day 21 – When a hike is not a hike

After our uber success last night (come on, laundry and cooking while camping is amazing!), we were slow to start this morning. The fog we’d seen last night over the bay had rolled in. Visibility was poor, rain came down and we had about one square meter of dryish space underneath the awning.

Getting the kids into rainproof gear, packing everything for breakfast at the camper’s kitchen to stay dry…all this took too long for our youngest who had the first accident of this trip. At a time when everything was wet anyways, moods were low and tempers easily flared. Poor her.

Lovely second breakfast in the summer garden of Petit Délice

Eventually we managed all the morning chores plus the extra work and left Inch beach for the second time. This time for good. Heading towards Killarney, the weather didn’t improve much. The rain turned into a drizzle eventually, but it still came down. I decided that we’d get a second breakfast or a coffee time in the late morning in Killarney. After walking around a little, we settled on Petit Délice, a small French bakery. They had seating space in their summer garden which luckily was covered so we had lovely chocolatey goodness and a warm tea. We also bought a baguette for lunch.

From Killarney we went south into the National park to Muckross House. Hiking in the National park is supposed to be lovely and really quite involved. While researching I found many awesome hiking trails…for adults. I’m just not comfortable with planning a day tour of 18km with our 4 year old. The Agent gets carried most of the time anyway.

An overcast, moody day for a hike. Both kids really loved the idea of riding in a jaundice car but they weren’t going around the lake. I asked

So I ended up with Muckross House. From here, there’s a 8.5km loop around the lake. That sounded doable and good. Flo made sandwiches out of the baguette to take along, we got to the start of the trail, had our lunch and the Agent promptly fell asleep in the carrier. So far so good. The hike was a disappointment though. Don’t get me wrong, it had lovely views, you just had to walk on tarmac all the time. It’s also advertised for bikers but I didn’t get that this would mean a sealed road for most of it. Bikes made so much more sense than to walk here that I felt pretty stupid to have chosen this “hike”. After 5km, we reached Dini’s Cottage our first waypoint. Number 3 was a trooper again, walking all five kilometers without too much complaining.

The Agent was asleep but even Number 3 couldn’t see over the sides of the bridge

Here, we sat down, had a drink and some ice cream for the kids. Though it is a loop, we had just reached the half-point mark. I couldn’t see Number 3 walking another 5 kilometers out of here again. Heck, even I didn’t really feel like walking another 5 kilometers on tarmac. Luckily, there was another option. When getting the trail map at the info centre, the warden mentioned that boats go to and fro between Muckross House and Dini’s Cottage. We might be in luck and catch a boat ride back with the kids.

I really hoped we would be in luck. Waiting around at Dini’s Cottage for over an hour, we weren’t. Every boat that arrived had a booked tour onboard to different locations along the lake. None of them were going back to Muckross House. Finally, we committed to walking. The first thing to do was walk about 300 meters away from the lake to see an old bridge. It was quite cool to see Old Weir Bridge. Getting back on the loop trail again, Flo moved into the wrong direction, towards Dini’s Cottage again. Frustrated with taking back our commitment to walking, I followed…just to see that Flo was talking to a boatman that had just arrived. While talking to him, a second boat arrive which (THANK GOODNESS) had space for us AND was going back to the House.

I paid right away just to make sure he’d take us back. Then we had another 20 minutes to kill at Dini’s Cottage before finally boarding and going back via the lake. Both kids were super excited about the boat ride. You got to see most of the track we’d walked on the way here from the water. A lot of the rocky landscape was hollowed out by the water.

Back at the car, we drove back a little towards the other side of Killarney again to an unspectacular, overpriced campground.