Currently sitting here in Queens town with strep throat. YUCK! So, I thought I would catch you up on what has been happening along the way.
After leaving Bay of Islands I decided to stop in one of the towns on the way to Auckland so that I could cut my bus trip in half. Therefore reducing the chances of me possibly throwing up on some poor lad next to me. The place I choose to stop in was Whargarei, pronounced FAN-gu-Ray.
I suppose any day that I have to take a bus turns out to be a bad day. This time I got off the bus stop and had 2 hours before I was able to check in at my hostel. So, I put the name in my maps on my phone and saw it was pretty close. I decided I would be able to walk the distance with all my stuff no problem. So walked along the marina and up a hill (again?@*&!!) to this adorable little hostel. Only to find out it had changed owners about 5 months prior and the new hostel was miles away. The owner of Honey Hostel turned out to be one of the nicest people ever!! She gave me tea and told me to wait while she got ready and she would take me to town. So I waited, drank my tea and fought off my tears. How do I always do this?! You may think that you are the kind of person that is always right, or always knows the way until you are alone with no one to second guess you! I need someone to second guess me!!
*this guy waited with me
The lady drove me back into town where the man from the hostel I was actually supposed to be at picked me up. He drove me way out of town to a weird hostel/camp ground. The cool thing about the YHA hostel was that it was just a 2min walk from the falls.
The next day myself and 2 other girls ventured out to find the Abbey caves with a goal of seeing glow worms. After about a 2 hour walk we got to the caves and were terrified. The cool and scary thing about them is that there is no guide, no lamps, stairs or handrails. You just see the sing and then crawl in…
The caves all have small creeks running trough them and since we were there during summer the water was only up to our mid calves at the deepest. So we took off our shoes and hiked trough barefoot. There is also eels and crawfish in the water, ha!
This is the entrance that you have to crawl into
This is how the glow worms catch their food, long sticky strands. I couldn't get any pictures of the glow worms because you can only see them in the pitch black.
So, let me repeat myself, we walked in the hot sun for 2 hours to crawl inside pitch black caves that have glowing worms and eels. cool.
Really it turned out to be amazing! I am so glad that we went and when we were leaving I the talked old man volunteering into giving us a ride back :).
