Tumu Tumu Toobing

Hey, eveyone!
Tomorrow, we catch our flight out of Auckland to Seoul, Korea! Unbelievable! Currently, we're on the west coast of the Northern Island- in Raglan- a sunny, surfing town. We like it here. We have made the most of our last week or so...leaving Motueka, we spent a couple days in Nelson...went to the Market... and headed towards the ferry stopping along the way for the Havelock (Green-lipped) Mussel Festival and stopped in Picton at an Irish Pub for a Guinness on St. Patty's Day. We boarded the ferry to cross the Cook Strait and landed in Wellington and went to the awesome Te Papa Museum...Heading up the west coast, we wanted to see Tangoriro National Park (and where Mt. Doom (Lord of the Rings) was filmed....we were driving along at one point and saw a bunch of people at a pullover so we went to check it out....we parked and walked over looking at a very muddy river and tons of mud and debris everywhere, we asked a gentleman what had happened and he told us that just the day before, the lahar had come down as the crater lake at the top of the Mt. Ruapehu volcano had given way...I remembered having read about the anticipation of this happening on the ferry ride in the beginning of our trip to the S. Island, so, everyone was well-prepared for it and all of the safety things put in place had worked- no major damage or injuries. Caused quite a stir, though. (no pun intended). (Incidentally, this had happened back in 1953 and there was a memorial to lives lost right there.) Okay, Mary's going to share about our last adventure...here I sign off and say, "It's been Heaps of FUN!" I've loved keeping in touch with you all, too...tomorrow, we'll be eating BimBimPa and are tremendously excited to meet Caits and Bean in Maui for a week. I'll be back in the Boat around April 6. I love you all! So yesterday we went black water rafting. It sounds rather scary and we were both fairly nervous as we were gearing up in our wet suits, helmets, and boots. It actually turned out to be a very calm, kind of tranquil experience. So we started out tromping through the rolling green hills, maneuvering around the cow pies in our wet suits and gum boots (traditional kiwi footwear, basically rain boots). Then we came upon a small opening with a ladder sticking out of the ground. We squeezed through the hole down into the caves where we were to be black water rafting. The rafting was actually tubing wich was really just sitting on tubes pulling yourself along on a rope in the pitch black and staring up at the glow worms on the ceiling which looked like a million little stars. We covered about a kilometer, partly tubing and partly walking from cave to cave. It was amazing. The water was very cold and we actually had to swim a couple of parts, which was a little scary swimming in black water, the only light you have is coming from everyone's headlamps. Plus people started talking about the movie Descent, which is about some girls caving when they come upon some humans that have lived down in the caves and evolved into white creatures with no eyes. Anyway, we climbed out another hole back into the cow covered hills. It was quite fun. Anyway, time is about out. Love you all, Mary