A dark descent into glowworm territory.

This morning, after a lovely evening, Katie and I started the day by finishing our sparkling wine from last night. After wine, we had breakfast, checked out of the hotel, and left our bags with the front desk before setting off for the Auckland Museum. We walked through Albert Park, which was full of climbing trees I wish we'd had the time to climb. (Hopefully, when we get back to Auckland, we can spend a couple hours there.) We also cut through the University of Auckland campus, which was around the time I started to realize just how humid New Zealand is. By the time we trekked across the highway and up the hill to the museum, I was dripping with sweat, prompting a comment from the desk attendant. Sweating on someone's desk is always a good way to start an interaction.

Katie and I spent a good amount of time in the museum, which was three levels and had exhibits from volcanic activity to Maori culture to WWII. My favorite part was entering a Maori house under restoration, of which I took several pictures. The museum curators who received the house painted it red, so contemporaries are trying to restore the interior to its original multicolored splendor. So far, the restoration is going really well. There was also a "Wearable Art" exhibit, which Katie and I found fascinating. I'll have to put pictures up of that soon as well. (Oh yeah - I found out that ocarinas are not inventions of the Legend of Zelda series. Who knew?)

After the museum, we caught a cab back to Sky City and had lunch at a restaurant called Depot. Depot reminded me strongly of several restaurants in San Francisco, which led to our first joint observation about New Zealand: NZ is very reminiscent of Northern California. From the rolling hills, to the wineries, to the restaurants, to the ferries, I keep thinking that I could be home right now. It's very comfortable, which is really nice, and I think sets us up for a great vacation. Anyway, Depot's food was very good, especially the oysters, and the squid-ink linguine with more mussels than pasta piled on top. (Incidentally, the second observation we made is that it doesn't seem like there are many New Zealanders working in Auckland - every person we've dealt with so far, minus two, has been a transplant, mostly from Europe although Americans are not lacking.)

We picked up the rental car after lunch. I was pretty excited to drive a stick again, especially on the left side of the road, but it turned out we rented an automatic. Still, it took about an hour to get really comfortable driving on the left, but I settled in. The drive down to Waitomo was stunning; more than once I began whistling music from LoTR, thinking of The Shire. We arrived at our B&B and walked across the street to grab dinner at Huhu, another highly-recommended place. I had their non-listed beer flight, a suggestion of both the guidebook and our B&B host, and a perfectly-cooked steak. Wonderful.

A while after dinner, Katie and I drove down to Aranui Cave. Our host recommended we go check out the area after 8:30. Driving down the hill, I was definitely nervous; there are no street lights for most of the way, and there's little indication you're going in the right direction. Fortunately, we made all the right turns and got there the first time. Stepping out of the car, I hadn't turned on my flashlight yet when I looked up. The night sky was spectacular. There were so many more visible stars than in the city that we ended up staring at the sky for a while before heading down the path.

The forest was eerily quiet, due in no small part to the lack of animals, since there are no native land mammals in New Zealand except bats (or maybe that's just the North Island? I can't remember) and there was nothing out making noise except us. More than once, we inched closer to each other, holding hands and laughing nervously at how creepy the path seemed. We walked for just a few short minutes, though it seemed much longer, and then got to a bridge, when I noticed something twinkling along the rock face to my left: glowworms. Katie and I were greeted by a cathedral of glowworms, sticking to the mud surrounding us on both sides. We marveled at the worms for several minutes, and unsuccessfully tried to take pictures of them, while listening to a nearby waterfall and the river rushing underneath. Standing under the stars and watching the glowworms was well worth the sense of danger on the way. After several minutes, we walked back to the car, and looked at the Milky Way and the stars for a while again before heading back to the B&B for the evening.

Tomorrow, we're going on an actual glowworm cave tour, and we hope to revisit the same bridge along a bush walk (though, sadly, we won't be able to see the glowworms in the sunlight). After that we're driving to Rotorua in preparation for our tour of Hobbiton! Here's to another great day in New Zealand.