Waitangi Day in Whangarei Heads

Just two weeks after Auckland Anniversary Day we had another long weekend - this time for Waitangi Day, which commemorates the signing of New Zealand's founding document - a treaty between the British crown and Maori chiefs. In American terms, it's the 4th of July, but in reality, it's a lot more complicated than that (which is a post for a different kind of blog).

To celebrate this divisive holiday, we rented a bach with a group of friends in Whangarei Heads, which is about 2.5 hours north of Auckland.  This area has so much going for it - beaches, hikes, waterfalls, caves - and even a couple brewpubs! Even though it was raining for part of the weekend, we managed to fit a lot in.

Our first day it rained almost the entire day, so we thought it would be a good day to explore some caves, and headed to the Waipu Caves, which are New Zealand's largest non-commercial glow worm caves. Despite being free to get into, they were as good as or better than any other glow worm caves anyone in the group had been to.

If you're unsure about what glow worm caves are, check out our post about black water rafting over Christmas 2013. If you're still curious, just know this - "Basically what we're looking at is the snot and poop from a bunch of cannibalistic maggots" - and it's glorious!

Entering the cave - this doesn't capture just how dark it was, but the headlamps were necessary.  Also pictured - baby spelunking!

More pics from inside the cave - the bottom two are shots of the chamber with the most glow worms. Once this HUGE crowd moved through, we stood in darkness and quiet for a couple of minutes to really appreciate what we were seeing.  Even Baby J seemed to appreciate the wonder of the glow worms and respected our moment of silence.

Trying to capture the wonder of the glow worms. The top right "constellation" of cannibalistic maggot poo looks like a map of New Zealand.

 We had to cut our cave walk short because the only way onward involved getting waist-deep in water, which none of us were prepared for at that time. But by the time we emerged from the cave, it had stopped raining, so we dropped off our non-waterproof electronics and headed to Piroa Falls.

The falls were beautiful, but the water was SO COLD!  I was quite content to stay on dry land with L and Baby J, but when KS jumped in, my FOMO took over and I followed suit.  My body eventually recovered from the shock and we headed toward the falls.

Pictures from under the falls - top right is J explaining to Rob exactly how to swim under the falls (apparently there's a cave behind it - but I was willing to take Rob's word for it).  Bottom row - Rob swimming into the falls and then emerging safely with J close behind him.

The house we stayed in turned out to be even better than it seemed in pictures - and about twice as big. Even though there were 10 adults and a baby, we never felt cramped or in each other's way. There were two levels, and each had its own kitchen and living room.  We were only a 10 minute walk from the beach (if you didn't get lost, which we did - a few times). We spent our evenings playing games - Cards Against Humanity, Catchphrase and a few new ones (including Heads Up, which is an app that C and N introduced us to - I highly recommend downloading it immediately and playing the "Act it Out" category - kept us amused until the wee sma' hours).

Each couple took responsibility for a meal.  Rob and I did our traditional bach meal of gringo taco night, which took a grisly turn when Rob accidentally dropped a very heavy and very sharp chef's knife on my foot. Fortunately I have the reflexes of a cat and was able to dodge the worst of it at the last nanosecond, but I did spend the rest of the evening making sure I wasn't bleeding onto the carpet. As a bonus, I was excused from cooking or cleaning for the remainder of the evening - and now I can tease Rob about it for the rest of our lives (since I have nothing else to go on)!

Top: The view from our balony.  Bottom: The whole group (less J, who had to leave early).

Clockwise from top left: K photobombing our taco night picture; Baby J in a kayak; drinks on the balcony; M and baby J

Nighttime in Whangarei Heads