When we picked up our rental car today the agent said we didn’t need to check it for dents, scratches, etc. because it was a brand new Toyota Corolla with 10 km on the odometer. After spending a few minutes finding important things like lights, windshield wipers we were off driving south. Our vehicles at home are older so are missing the newest features like Lane Departure Warning. This is a great feature when you are driving on the “wrong” side of the road and are getting use to positioning the car in the lane.

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First stop today was Otorohanga. It’s a cute little town that’s all about kiwis ---- the birds not the fruit.

There are over three hundred caves in the Waitomo area but only a few are open to the public. There are three caves main caves that have been entertaining visitors for over 100 years. Ruakuri Cave was the one we chose to visit.

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The new man made entrance is a spiral ramp. The original entrance was closed a number of years ago when the remains of Maori chief were found. The cave receives a lot of visitors, so to protect it railings and sensors were installed. If any body part goes past the railing an alarm goes off.

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In one part of the cave the ceiling was full of a formation known as “straws”.

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A little cave with stalactites and stalagmites.

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Now you are looking at the photo and saying why did she post this obviously bad photo. Well this is a photo of the “object” that brings most people to these caves. The little dots of lights are glowworms, well actually glow larvae of the fungus gnat. This is an interesting insect --- the gnat only lives for a couple of days, just long enough to get it’s eggs fertilized and laid. The larvae lives six to nine months, using it’s “glow” to capture insects for food.

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One more photo of a cave formation.

We get back on the road again and drive a couple of hours east to Rotorua. We are staying at the Ambassador Thermal motel. “Thermal” is a good hint as to what Rotorua is famous for. If you guessed hot springs would be correct. It also means the air has a constant sulfur smell that takes a little while to get use to. Our motel has a natural hot spring pool that we enjoyed.

Rotorua is on the shores of Lake Rotorua. After dinner we took a walk and came upon steam come from rocks on the beach.

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We found this hole with water bubbling away.

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We also saw a number of different birds included a bunch of these geese.