Today wasn't that exciting but I guess I'll do a short post anyway. We decided to stay another day in Wanganui since we still have a couple days before we have to catch the ferry in Wellington.

We slept in and hung around here this morning. After lunch we went over to a lake and some gardens in town. We walked around the lake and looked at all the pretty flowers and weird water birds. There was a little boy there with his mom, about 3 yrs old...he said Hi to me and I said Hi back. He then came up, held my hand and started walking with me and told me he was going to go home with me to my house, haha. He was so cute...and very forward. "We're going to your house to play with toys"....umm, ok. haha. His mom was so embarrassed.

Later on we stopped by a farm and got some strawberries and then went to a glass blowing studio to look at their gallery. Pretty laid back afternoon. After all that we stopped by the Pak-n-Sav to get stuff for dinner. We're kind of tired of grilling, kind of like we're tired of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch, so we got some Italian sausage and greens and made a pasta sort of thing. It turned out pretty good.

Here at our camp ground there is a goat that roams around and 3 bunnies that hang out in the grass. None of them will let me pet them:(

Pretty boring post but can't say I didn't warn you. We just didn't do anything very exciting today. Tomorrow we're driving to Wellington and doing who knows what. It's a pretty big city so there should be a lot to choose from.

RIP POS VAN

Well, ding dong the van is dead. We got back to Thames and Les, the car guy, was waiting to give us an update. He said the crack in the radiator had been repaired, but the overheating had done so much damage to the engine that it would cost about as much as we paid for it to get it fixed...and a lot of extra time to order parts and that sort of thing. He had more bad news for us later, after he talked to our insurance company and found out that our policy only covers fire and theft, not mechanical damage. I asked him if he would be willing to set the van on fire for us. I was only about 2% kidding and he said no. Soooo that's right...that stupid van only lasted us a week. We abandoned it in Thames with Les and tried not to think about how much money we lost/wasted on it:(

We spent the rest of the afternoon figuring out a new plan...checking on car rental prices, etc. With there being two of us, taking the bus would be a lot more expensive...and I'm not much for public transportation. So we decided we would take a one-way bus back to Auckland, rent a camper van that we could sleep in, return it in Christchurch so we won't have to back-track, and then fly from Christchurch to Auckland to catch our Sydney flight in April.

So back in Auckland, we went to pick up our new van. It's the same concept as the last one, only about a decade newer and with crazy new gadgets like a "radio" and "power windows." Really nice actually...or maybe just A LOT better than before.

We started driving south from Auckland toward the Waitomo Caves. They're famous for glow worms:) It was about a 2.5 hr drive from Auckland. We spent the night at another one of those nice campgrounds...they're a chain. Then this morning we went on our black water rafting cave tour to see the glow worms. It turned out to be even cooler than I thought and definitely one of the more unique things I've done. There was only 6 of us on the tour and we put on our wetsuits (yuck!), got our tubes and followed our guide into the cave. Now that I think about it, this is going to be a really hard thing to describe. There a ton of stalactites that looked like they were dripping off the ceiling of the cave. There were some glow worms on them but most of them were deeper in the cave where it was really dark. It was COLD in there...the water and the air. Some parts of the cave we climbed through, some we floated through in our tubes. There were also 2 small water falls that we jumped off of. The caves are COMPLETELY pitch black so we only had the lights on our helmets and the glow worms to lead us...which they actually did at some points because they're always concentrated in the center of the cave ceilings so it kind of helps to tell where you're going. VERY COOL tour...totally worth it and again, hard to describe. The picture I posted of the glow worms isn't one I took myself, but I wanted to give an idea of what they look like.

After the caves, we kept driving on to Wanganui which is about 3 hrs away from Wellington, where we catch the ferry to the south island in a couple days. Right now we're at ANOTHER one of those campsites. The desk guy told us about a giant swing over the river that was only about 5 km from here so we went and checked that out before dinner. It was fun...and free! I couldn't believe it was just there for anyone to hurt themselves on, haha. There's a lot of that sort of thing here though...go at your own risk type stuff. I think that's funny because everyone here is all about wearing your seat belt ALL the time. Feel free to kill yourself on a giant swing over the river but always wear your seat belt no matter what.

Oh, and for tonight and tomorrow night, I can say that I live in a van down by the river and actually mean it.