We drove south to the town of Hamilton to meet up with our friend and Jim’s former colleague Emily, who is spending some time traveling around the country. Our first stop was to the small town of Waitomo. There isn’t much going on in Waitomo except for a large network of glow worm filled caves that tourists flock to. We got a little turned around on our way there and ended up stopping off at our first of several extremely helpful tourist information booths called I-Sites. The nice people at the I-Site were able to book our cave tour for the following day and also gave us some good directions to make our way to Waitomo.

Our accommodations in Waitomo were one-of-a-kind to say the least. We stayed at Woodlyn Park, home of the enterprising sheep shearer Billy Black and his creative theme based motels including the Hobbit Motel, Train Motel, and Plane Motel. We stayed in the only room available in the Waitanic Motel. As the name suggests, it was an old ferry boat refurbished into a four room hotel. We were a little skeptical, but upon boarding the vessel it was actually a very nice place complete with a couple bedrooms, full kitchen, nice bathroom and port holes.

The following day, we got up early to prepare for our 9:00am black water rafting trip called Black Labyrinth. At the tour company’s office, we suited up in our our umpa-lumpa-esq (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) outfits, which, in addition to looking pretty funny, also happened to be wet, cold and a little smelly. After a few good laughs at our cool get-ups, we shuttled up to the caves to retrieve our inner tubes. The next few hours we would spend squeezing, hiking, jumping and floating our way through a huge cave system. One of the more un-nerving things we had to do was the ‘leap of faith’ where we crept out to the edge of a waterfall, turned backwards, placed our tubes around our butts, and jumped back into the blackness. Toward the end of the trip, with most of the hiking and jumping over with, we spent some time floating peacefully down the cave in the pitch black with only the star-like patchwork of glow worms to lead us out of the cave and into the daylight.

After a hot shower and some soup, we continued on to the self-proclaimed ‘Trout Fishing Capital of the World’ (more about that nonsense later) of Turangi. We stopped off at I-Site number two, and booked two nights of accommodations at the Judge’s Pool Motel, and also reserved spot on a shuttle bus for our hike the next day.

The shuttle bus arrived at 6:30 the following morning to take us to the trail head for the Tongariro Crossing, claimed to be one the the top day hikes in the world. It’s an 18.5 kilometer (11.5 miles) hike that leads up into and out of several volcanic craters, and back down though a beautiful valley looking out over the immense Lake Taupo. Heavy wind, rain and fog plagued the first half of the hike, and we missed out on some great views of Mt. Ngauruhoe from the top of Red Crater, the high point of the hike. Finally on our decent, the clouds began to clear and let the sun peak through. We stopped for lunch at a camping hut and were able to get out of the wind. Due to frozen fingers and lack of photo opportunities, we finished the hike in just under six hours verses the prescribed seven to eight.

As we were in a trout capital, Jim couldn’t pass up the opportunity to throw in a line. Not too tired from the hike, he rented waders and fly rod and reel, bought himself a fishing licence and gave it his best on the Tongariro River. After two excursions in the afternoon he called it a day without even a nibble. So much for Trout Capital of the World.

The next day, we headed north along the east side of Lake Taupo with the destination of Rotorua. We stopped off in Taupo to visit our friendly booking friends at I-Site for our accommodations and got a coffee before getting on the road again. On the way to Rotorua, we stopped off to visit the steaming, bubbling, gurgling, and  incredibly smelly geothermal wonderland of Wai-o-tapu.

We got into Rotorua in the afternoon once again visiting the neighborhood I-Site for help in booking a visit to a traditional Maori (New Zealand’s original inhabitants) village. That night we spent the evening with the Mitai tribe and learned a little about their culture and customs, and watched a performance of their traditional song and dance. The best part of the evening though, was the vast amount of food we consumed at the hangi or feast. It was a pretty impressive eating performance we put on.

Our last day in Rotorua, Emily went off to get pampered at the Polynesian Spa, while we explored the town. We later walked through the town’s museum and learned quite a bit about the strange and interesting geothermal history of Rotorua. Inspired by all the talk of the the mineral water’s healing powers, we took advantage of the 108 degree mineral pool at our motel followed by a nice dip in the bubbly spa. Despite being smelly, slimy and uncomfortably hot, we think the mineral waters did manage to help out our sore hiker’s muscles.

We parted ways with Emily the following morning, and drove north to Auckland to check out NZ city life for a few days. It’s a pretty walkable city and we covered most of the central area in a short amount of time. Auckland is know as the “City of Sails,” so we decided to take a nice dinner sail out into the harbour. It was a fun evening on the water and a great way to close out our stay in NZ.

Our first day, we took the obligatory walking tour to become acquainted. We started at the Observatory Park for a panoramic vista of the city, walked through the Rocks neighborhood and ended up down at Circular Quay for great views of the Harbor Bridge and the Opera House. We then strolled through the beautiful Botanical Gardens before walking around the mainly commercial Central neighborhood.

During our jaunt, we concluded that Sydneysiders do not work during the day. We can’t tell you how many walkers and runners we saw, but the Dri-Fit to blazer ratio was much too high. The overworked New Yorkers in us wanted to yell at them to go back to their offices to get some work done! Maybe that is a sign that we need to extend our travelers vacation beyond 2008. Upon returning to the Lord Nelson around 4:00pm, we found the bar packed with guys and gals dressed in their best business casual. Good for them. We would love to jog during our lunch break and be at the bar by 4:00pm.

After a tasty breakfast at the Lord Nelson’s (no beer), we headed down to Circular Quay to catch a ferry to Manly Beach. The ferry ride gave us a chance to see all of the inlets and harbors that make up the greater Sydney Harbor. About forty-five minutes later, we were looking out over the wide open ocean. The weather was somewhat sunny, but not warm enough to do anymore than dip our toes in the surf.

After the day in Manly, we headed back to Sydney to get ready for our big night at the Opera House. We watched a great performance that night of Kate Ceberano with the Sydney Symphony. We didn’t really know who she was, but concluded that she was a pretty big Aussie star back in the ’80s. She had some serious pipes (wind), and the Symphony sounded absolutely beautiful. We had a great time and even got to toast our anniversary with glasses of champagne just two days late.

The next day’s word of the day was “rain”. It rained all day long. We didn’t let it slow us down though, and hopped on another ferry in the morning to cruise across the harbor to visit the Taronga Zoo. In addition to the standard animals on display, the zoo had some awesome performances to show off the talents of the animals. We were amazed by the athleticism of the seals, grossed out by the gorillas, and admired the grace of the birds. We made it a point to see some of the great Aussie animals like koalas, crocs, kangaroos and wombats. The setting of the zoo provided fantastic views (although a little grey) of Sydney. We have included some of our best animal photos in our slideshow below.

Thank goodness for Gortex rain jackets, but after lunch we were ready to seek shelter. We headed for the central train station to catch a train to the Blue Mountains. They aren’t really mountains by the traditional definition, but rather really large hills – but scenic nonetheless. We arrived in the town of Katoomba at 4:00pm and had the evening to explore the town. It is a sleepy little town in the mountains but larger than some of the others in the area. We stayed at the historic Carrington Hotel, which was built in 1800′s, and sits right at the top of town. The location was great for our two night stay. The rain got progressively worse as the evening wore on, and we eventually hunkered down in a cafe for dinner. The restaurant had some really great live music, and we ended up staying for most of the night.

We started off the following morning with a hearty breakfast before we began our day in the wilderness. We got on the mountain trolley bus that does an all day loop around the area so we could hop on and off as we pleased. It was a great way to get around to all of the outlooks and hikes we wanted to check-out.

Our day started out a little shaky when some rain clouds moved in and gave us a little shower. We were glad it didn’t turn into all day wash out like the prior day. We rode the trolley to Echo Point to begin our tour. After snapping a few shots of the Three Sisters, and waiting for the rain to pass, we decided to head out into the bush and do a little walkabout. It wasn’t too long of a hike, maybe three miles or so, but was a lot of fun. We started by getting our quads loosened up on the 900 stairs leading down the Giant’s Stairway, which snaked down alongside the Three Sisters. At the bottom, we hiked through the forest on the Federal Pass Track where we connected to the Furbers Steps, which led us up and out of the valley. The trail took us past the misty Katoomba Falls, through the soggy and dripping forest, and a short detour took us right to the bottom of the falls where we had a brief Maid of the Mist flashback.

At the end of our hike, we reconnected with our trolley which shuttled us back through Katoomba, Leura, and then to Gordon Falls where we did another fun and scenic hike to the Leura Cascades. One the way home our trolley driver stopped at a vantage point to show us the blue haze caused by the oils of the Eucalyptus leaves for which the Blue Mountains were named for.

The following day we were back on the train to Sydney where we checked into Wake Up hostel near the Central station that was a useful location for our early morning departure to New Zealand. It was a backpackers haven, but we have been staying at so many hotels and guesthouses lately that the youthful crowd was a bit of a shock. We explored Darling Harbour that afternoon and spent the remainder of the evening doing some much needed travel coordination for NZ.

Our last day in Australia, we hopped on a bus and headed for the famed Bondi Beach. Actually, we rode the bus to the other famed beach of Coogee and made the spectacular three mile cliff walk up the coast to Bondi. As the name implies, the walk leads you right along the tops of the cliffs looking out into the blue ocean. Even bluer than the water, was the sky. Once the clouds finally cleared away, we have been amazed over and over at just how clear the Sydney sky is. It was a sunny but windy day and the waves were enormous. We’re not sure what it would take to close the beaches in this place, but there is no possible way we would have gone out in that water for the fear of promptly drowning. We sat outside and ate a nice lunch before going back to the big city and bidding farewell to the land down under.