Lovely New Zealand, so very lovely.

So, we didn't get off to the best start with our New Zealand adventure. We were all tired and had a hard time pulling out that first morning there, after our late night at the airport. But Brian got up and went to the airport to get our rental car, while I roused the kids. We ended up with a regular minivan this time, which was a nice switch from the HUGE fullsize vans (wimpy engines) we had with both our rentals in Australia. We left Auckland and headed South toward Hamilton, to meet up with our friends, the Jensens. We had decided to do much of our NZ time together, including renting a house together, which worked out nicely.

We met them at the LDS Temple, outside of Hamilton. What a lovely place! The temple is HUGE, and the grounds are gorgeous. It is surrounded by green, rolling hills and farmlands. There is a nice, large visitor's center, where we looked at church history memorabilia of the area and talked to some nice senior missionaries from the States. We probably stayed too long, but it was relaxing and enjoyable to be out of the car in ideal weather.

Eventually, we discussed with the Jensens and decided to go see the Waimoto Glowworm caves, about a hour away. We had read about them and heard the tours were less than an hour long, usually something you can walk up and get right in. Well... too bad for us, that was not the case. We wound around a lot and the drive ended up taking quite a bit longer. It was a beautiful drive, though, so we didn't really mind just looking at the countryside on our way. But then, we went to get tickets for the tour only they were booked up for most of the rest of the day, and we missed out! We let the kids play at a cute little park nearby for a half hour or so, then started back. We headed to our place, only to find our GPS led us astray and we ended up pretty lost, in the dark, driving on the left side of the road, on winding little roads near the ocean for a couple of hours. Oh, how I wish it had been light for that little escapade. I'm still wondering what scenery we missed on that drive!

We finally found our place, an airbnb house in Cambridge that we shared with the Jensens. That was fun to stay together, though I'm afraid the room for Troy and Lynda-Sue was tight and not so comfy... not like it looked in the pictures. I felt bad about that. :( But it was a nice house, and met our needs just fine. It had a great big kitchen and dining area where we tended to congregate and visit together. And a nice living room where the kids played games and talked at different times.

Anyway, that's as much as I'm going to write in this post, and will continue telling about some of our sites in another post...