Day 5- November 22st

We went cave tubing through the glow warm caves in Waitomo and it was quite the
adventure. There were a series of underground waterfalls that they had us jump off

of backwards with our tubes snug around our bums. The glow worms are actually
glow maggots and are really beautiful, similar to looking up at the night sky with
a slightly greener tint. It was very cold though which was quite a distraction from
what would otherwise have been an awesome tour (it was still great- just very very
cold).
The drive to Napier afterwards was one of our longest commutes of the trip and
had the only section of drive that was not breathtakingly scenic. It lasted about 45
minutes and was almost a nice break from otherwise straining and gushing over the
landscape every couple minutes- what a problem to have.

We don’t have any photos from Day 5 since we were in the cave or the car the entire time. I do have a fair number of pictures taken over the dashboard, but I don’t think they’re worthy of the blogosphere.

Day 6- November 23rd

Napier! We didn’t get to spend as much time here as we would have wanted so we really didn’t spend anytime in the actual city. Instead we rented a tandem bike in a suburb and spent a few hours exploring. There was some harsh words and even some tears as we adjusted to the tandem bike but it only took as about 15 minutes to be happy and comfortable on it. We visited a lavendar farm, chocolate factory and museum (which was a little lackluster but we picked up some interesting facts about chocolate), a local artist gallery, a thai restaurant (lunch), and a winery. We had rented the 1/2 day option from Bike D’Vine but could easily have been happy with a full day. There were several more winerys and some monasteries further down the trails.

As of right now we are missing the SD card with the pictures from biking (ahhh!) but here are a couple shots we took of Napier (the art deco city) from the car.