31st October 2009
We were woken early this morning by the sun streaming in through the French windows which lead from our room directly onto the deck. A sunshine breakfast outside followed.
Since the weather was so nice we decided to follow the river walk up to Whangarei Falls, reputedley the most photographed waterfalls in NZ. Starting at AH Reed Kauri Park we walked along the treetop boardwalk among the ancient and massive Kauri trees before following the river up to the falls. The foilage alongside the river contained a lot of ferns and yukkas that we would see in gardens back home.
We reached the waterfalls and added our photo to the many that have gone before, which I suspect is something to do with the Falls’ accessibility since there is a carpark right at the top.
After the waterfalls, we visited the Whangarei Quarry Gardens. This is a community project which since 1997 has been working to turn an only quarry into gardens featuring native sub-tropical species. The volunteers have transformed the former quarry into a lovely park with a lake, waterfalls, wild areas and formal areas.
After lunch back at Little Earth Lodge, we borrowed a couple of head torches and helmets and headed off to explore Abbey Caves, which is just behind the hostel. This is an undeveloped network of 3 caves with glowworms and limestone formations.
The first cave, Organ Cave is now blocked, so we continued onto the second, Middle Cave. This was supposed to be the drier of the two caves, but just after we entered we came across a pool of water, very cold water. Not being brave enough to wade through we returned to the surface and headed for the final cave, Ivy Cave.
As we entered Ivy Cave there was water rushing down into it, we managed to hop from stone to stone to avoid getting wet, but not being experienced cavers (and frankly, with caving never having been top of the list of ‘must-do’ activities) we were a bit nervous with all the running water. We went down into the cave and it started to get a bit low, still with water flowing, so we stopped and turned off our head torches. The roof of the cave had patches of little dots of light - the glowworms. This is what we had wanted to see, so mission accomplished we headed back to the surface and the sunshine.
