A Life of Streiff

April 19, 2009

It seems like we have been on the go for days. Last week was Easter and we had four days off. So we decided to take off to the south. It took us five hours to drive what is normally a three hour drive because it was a holiday and everyone was on their way out of town. It took us 2 hours to just get through downtown Auckland.

We had made reservation at a bed and breakfast called the HillTin. We thought it was just a clever way to tap into the name Hilton but in fact it got that name because it is really made out of corrugated tin. The entire house including the shower had cement floors and the walls were tin. It had several bedrooms so they changed it into a bed and breakfast. We arrived at eight thirty using our TOM TOM GPS. When it said “you have arrived at your destination” we were out in the country and there were no homes in site, we couldn’t figure out where to go because the only other road was a gravel one that went through a farm field and then angled straight up a very steep hill. We called and asked where to go from here and she said “Oh take the gravel road” and that we would see the sign. We saw a sign made out of tin with hand written letters saying “Hill Tin” we went up the road which was completely dark and wound our way up a hill. We arrived at our place and it was just a unique little home. We were greeted by Chris, the owner and shown to our room. It looked like someone’s bedroom and if we wanted to watch TV we had to go into their family room and watch it with her.
In the morning she made us poached eggs over toast with cooked tomatoes and bacon. It was really good. The view from their hill top was spectacular and you could see the entire valley from their patio and kitchen. Quite a beautiful site.
After Breakfast we said our goodbyes and headed off to the Waitomo Caves, ” Wai” means water and “tomo” means holes or caves. The caves are all formed from limestone and are a result of millions of years of water running and dripping through the rock. The area is honey combed with caves running all over the place.
You can explore several different caves depending on the experience you want and all the caves have glowworms in them. Glow worms are the larva stage of a fly and they hang from the cave ceiling with a little speck of glowing tail. They hang a silk like thread straight down to catch other bugs which they then eat. It is really quite amazing to see thousands of these little specks of light lighting up the cave which would otherwise be in total darkness. We had reviewed the many brochures and planned on doing the black water rafting, where you float the cave in inner tubes but when they told us that you had to jump backwards off a five foot high shelf into the cold river, and in total darkness to boot, “I said NO way.” They also mentioned that there were fresh water eels all through the river. Well, that sealed it, we took the rubber boat. Besides it was a cool rainy day and I was already cold in my sweatshirt and windbreaker so I wasn’t about to get into a bathing suit and jump into a cold river with eels.

I did get to feed some goat meat to one of the eels and it was huge!!! The boat trip was great and we were able to see the glow worms up close. The Glowworms are the larvae stage of a winged insect that can only survive in damp dark places. The light glowworms emit is call bioluminescence, a mixture of 4 chemicals. The whole top of the cave was covered with glowworms.
We also walked through another cave with stalactites and old fossils of the Moa bird which is now extinct. We hiked to the end of the cave and saw several sink holes where animals had fallen into the caves and died, leaving just their bones.

After we finished the last of our scheduled caves we took off for Lake Taupo in the middle of the island. Lake Taupo is the biggest lake in Austral-Asia area and roughly the size of Singapore and it’s famous for its rainbow trout fishing. I wonder why we went there??? We got there in time to charter a fishing boat for the next day and had a nice dinner at Burger fuel overlooking the beautiful lake. In the morning we ate breakfast and then drove to the famous bungee jumping site. It was set up on a long platform that hangs over a beautiful river and was about 200 feet above the water. I could hardly walk out on the platform because it was so high. I couldn’t believe anyone would want to do that but Paul wanted to do it. So he got into the line to pay and discovered that it was a 3 hour wait. Our fishing boat was scheduled to begin in an hour and a half so it was wait in line or go fishing. We went fishing.
I wasn’t sure that I wanted to get a license but Paul talked me into it.

We had been out about ten minutes when we had the first fish on. Paul was reeling it in when I had one on. It was a fun three hours and we caught 9 fish and 3 got away. Paul got the record for the biggest and I caught the smallest.
We walked around the town which was so cute. It reminded me of how shopping was 30 years ago in the states with lots of little shops and bakeries all over the place. All of the restaurants on the water front had tables outside so you could eat outside and look at the lake. It was so quaint. We spent two days there and then back to Auckland.

It was a fun weekend. We are trying to go somewhere every weekend because we are going to Samoa in June.
Monday seven of the senior couples went on a kayak trip up north at a place call Poipu. You can only go when the tide is up because it’s a tidal river that empties into the ocean and only once a day is the river full enough to paddle down. We had so much fun racing, splashing and relaxing with such great people.

One couple, Sandy 75 and Reese 79, were giving us a bad time because we were paddling in sync, so we threw them a rope and started to tow them down the river. A few minutes later unknown to Paul, we were towing 4 couples. Each had passed the one behind a rope. We turned around and they were all laughing at us. Paul thought it was getting harder to paddle.

For lunch we went to a place called the Tea House which is only opened at lunch time. It’s just a small house and the owners cook up three main dishes. They had these biscuits that were to die for and they came with homemade raspberry jam, cream, and butter. It seemed like we had stepped back in time to England and we’re out having a tea in the country side.

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Tuesday
We were in a Public Affairs conference all this week. It started off with a devotional with President Baxter our Area president. He is from Scotland and is a great, spiritual man, but has a cute personality too. We spent the rest of the day getting binders and all training material ready for the conference. We left around 2:30 to go to Hamilton a two hour drive for dinner and to go to the temple. The temple is beautiful but a really different design. You have to walk through the chapel to go to the changing room. It was a long day and we didn’t get home until 10:30. The rest of the week we were in training from 8 to 4:30 every day.

Friday after the conference all six couples went to Rotorua for a night and a day. It’s a three hour drive southeast from Auckland. They have a park called Te Puia and it has a cultural show, at which Paul and I both got picked to perform. I had to do the poi balls and Paul had to do the Huka.

Paul our Maori pole God. I think he finally has the tongue thing down

In the park there are Maori villages, geothermal geysers, and mud pots. The whole town smells, in fact the locals call it stinky town because of the sulfur smell.

After the park we went walking around town and of all things, ran into people from Utah. Paul had his U of U hat on and a lady came up and said that they were from southern Utah. They were there on vacation and their husbands were off hunting deer and elk. It was fun to talk with them for a while.
We ended the day by going to a place called the buried city. The city was covered with five feet of mud after a volcano had erupted and the whole town was cover with a huge wall of mud. Before the disaster there was a pink terraced waterfall that was beautiful and tourists would come from England to see it. Unfortunately it was all buried under the mud and destroyed. We hiked down to the river and saw another waterfall that was so beautiful and well worth the hike. The streams had huge trout in them and it about killed Paul to look but not touch. We got home around 9:00 and are exhausted today.
I kind of feel that we are like Chevy Chase in the movie “Vacation” when he had only a few minutes to see the Grand Canyon. His head bobbed up and down a couple of times and he was off to something else. We look about the same as we are trying to see so much of New Zealand in such a short time.