If you missed Part 1, it's here.
Part two starts with a visit to Joanne's uncle Chris, the oldest of her father's siblings, who has recently had an operation and whom we were very worried about.
Chris has two dogs who live in a car. The kids thought it was a great hoot but the dogs are only in there at night - so no heat issues, not like Australia. The windows were rolled down a bit and I couldn't resist the urge to stick my finger in there. One of the dogs barked loudly and looked like it was about to bite me but it didn't. It was just being playful and my finger almost went up its nose instead. Kaelan saw it though and instantly developed a fear of the dogs.
We spent a while with Chris and Louise and he let the dogs run about. Tristan was fine but it took a little while for Kaelan to settle down. In the end though, he was laughing and running around with the dogs and didn't want to go.
When we left Chris' place, we headed down to Waitomo for the glow worm caves. We had a quick lunch stop in a rest area along the way. We were all glad to have an opportunity to stretch our legs but the boys (as usual) took things one step further. Spying a nearby farm, they jumped the fence and started chasing the sheep - it looked funny but we were worried about angry famers. In the end however, it was an angry sheep who tried to headbutt Kaelan. The boys developed a healthy respect for sheep after that.
The glow worm tour was better than usual and the tour guide was very friendly. The steps were a little slippery and it was dark but there's always one nut in each group (not me this time). I turned around to warn a lady behind about a sharp drop, since she was carrying a baby but my warning came too late. She made a doozy step but didn't fall.
Unfortunately, what I didn't realise was that she was taking advantage of the dark and her dodgy step caused her boob to pop out (with a loud "pop" sound) from the baby's mouth and it almost hit me in the face. To make matters worse, the baby deprived of it's morning tea, let out a loud wail which drew everyones attention. I got away from her quick-smart. Seriously... a slippery wet and dark cave would probably be on my list of the worst places to breastfeed - assuming that I even had the attributes to do so.
The cave tour was pretty full and their boat filled up leaving us to wait in the dark for about 10 minutes. This was great because we got a good long look at the glow worms. Of course, the kids were mucking up near the lake and I said to Kaelan, "hey, don't muck around because it's dark and if you fall into the water, nobody will ever find you". He had ten minutes to mull over that statement in the dark and then he suddenly announced that he wasn't going on the boat. Luckily a second tour guide offered to take him back via the land route.
The rest of our day was spent travelling to our next hotel which has a snowy mountain out our window. Along the way we saw cows, sheep, horses, goats, ostriches (and lots of babies - lambs, calves etc). We saw a hedgehog too but unfortunately it was roadkill (so not as cute as we'd like).
The boys were really excited to see that the mountains had snow on them - they've never seen real snow - and the view just kept getting better and better. The view from our hotel was awesome. Of course, we arrived too late to do anything that night, so we went out for dinner instead.
Along the way, Joanne accidentally ran over an animal. We don't know what it was but she thinks it was a possum. We passed a warning sign about kiwi's a few seconds later so the boys and I ribbed her about coming to New Zealand and killing their fauna. "We came, We saw, We squished!". Turns out that NZ has a possum problem (more possums than sheep - and more sheep than people) so apparently we did them a favour.
The next morning, we went into town to get some gloves and found some adult gloves in the NZ equivent of wollies for $18. There were no kids gloves so we went to a ski shop which had a "big sale" on but even so their cheapest pairs were $60 and $100. We ended up getting adult gloves for the kids too - at least they can grow into them. The boys looked like cartoon characters with giant hands.
Next, we drove up the mountain and went to where all the skiers were. The boys threw snowballs but it took a few goes and injuries and a lot of crying before Kaelan understood that you have to make your own - not just throw any old chunk of ice at people.
We got tickets to the chairlift and I know Kaelan was about to wimp out but I kept him talking so much that he didn't realize where we were until the seat was almost under him. Of course I was so busy with Kaelan that I almost forgot about Tristan. He nearly didn't make the seat but I hoisted him up by the shirt. Jo said that the chairlift operator looked panicked for a while.
Getting off the chairlift was fun because it was going fast and I didn't realise that we had to get off until it was almost too late. It was even worse for Joanne who actually did miss her bit and had to jump off and run at us. At first I held my arms out and said "don't worry, I'll catch you" but then I thought better of it and stepped aside... ...luckily she didn't fall over or I'd have been in real trouble.
Tristan was very funny in the snow and he kept dropping to do snow angels.
The snow at the top of the mountain was much better and softer than the snow at the bottom and we had some much better snowball fights. We had a hot chocolate up there too before going back down.
We weren't sure if we were going to make it back into town because we'd forgotten to fill up on Petrol. My bad... she asked me to remind her and I forgot. Luckily Joanne knew the quickest way back into town but I got confused and pointed saying "that way"... It was the wrong way. We squandered some of our precious petrol turning around but Joanne was a good sport about it and was laughing "because", she said, "If we run out of petrol, it just means that YOU will have to walk further". Luckily we made it to a petrol station.
Our next destination, Rotorua was only 2.5 hours away but it took most of the day because we made a few photo and tourist stops.
The kids were fighting in the car a lot so I put a movie on the laptop and we got about 2 hours quiet. We stopped at the hulka falls and the kids were impressed but being away from their movie, they quickly got into a fight.
We also visited a honey place but there were no taste testers and everything was too expensive with some normal-sized jars of honey costing $100. On the plus side, Kaelan did get to play with their sheep.
We got to Rotorua at about 6pm and moved into our cabin but it was very uncomfortable and the bed was too squishy. The place is supposed to have thermal pools but they're closed for repair. How do you repair a thermal pool? That had me worried.
Stay tuned for our Rotorua adventures.
0 comments:
Post a Comment