Kia ora! Hello!

This was a quick wee trip where we hired a car and were doing a bit of a loop to fit in visiting a friend in Auckland, celebrating my Great-Grans 90th birthday in Tauranga and chilling out for a couple days in Raglan before flying back out of Auckland.

Now this is a summary about the Waikato so I won’t go in to detail about catching up with our friend, seeing the family and I will also try not to bore you about how our flight got cancelled out of Auckland due to a state of emergency because of the flooding and how we got stuck there for an additional night.

On the list of things to do was:

*Try Raglan Roast in Raglan

*Explore the Ruakuri Carves at Waitomo

*Enjoy some downtime away from the city life & work

A very simple and achievable list indeed.

We booked the Lovebird Cottage via the Canopy Glamping site which was a short drive out of Raglan, which meant we got to enjoy the natural music of the birds, weather and the odd cow. The cottage had a ‘bush bath’ which was a short walk down the bank, quite large and private - this paired perfectly with a 5pm glass of red.

Drove out to Bridal Veil Falls, but not before grabbing a Raglan Roast coffee on the way in Te Uku in an old post shop and they did not disappoint. The falls can be viewed at a few different points along the track, some which are on the flat and then you can walk down 200+ stairs if you wish to view it to the bottom. Overall, was roughly 45mins after we had done the full route, taken lots of photos and had a sit down at the bottom. We then head out to Raglan and did a stroll around the township which meant lots of photos and exploring the cool shops around there, followed by one of the best mince & cheese pies I have had from the bakery.

The following morning, we drove down to Waitomo, checked in and did a tour of the Ruakuri Caves. Does everyone get a little anxious being in a cave, really far underground? Or is that just me? Anyway, the tour took about an hour and a half and was led by a second generation tour guide of the caves so she had plenty of knowledge to share. This was a great experience, nothing like that sense of achievement after completing something that takes you out of your comfort zone, but also because we learnt a lot throughout that tour. From here, it was then a pretty long & wet drive back to Auckland to try fly home but like I said earlier, I won’t bore you with that story.

Fun facts:

*Ruakuri Caves translates to the Den of Dogs (rua – den, kuri, dogs) after wild dogs were discovered living in the entrance of the cave 400-500 years ago.

*Ruakuri is the longest guided underground walking tour in Aotearoa.

*Glow worms are actually 2-3cm long, for some reason I thought they were a lot smaller!

*Raglan Roast are acing it with their consistency of a great coffee - highly important as a Wellingtonian! Doesn’t seem to matter which of their cafes you happen to pop into, you walk out with a cup of happiness.

Haere rā! Goodbye!