New Zealand is amazingly beautiful. It’s also spring here and we love the cooler temperatures. Everywhere we go is pretty and green. It’s like the Shenandoah Valley, Colorado mountains, the pacific northwest and a touch of the desert southwest all rolled into one. There are very few people outside of the cities and lots of cows and sheep (4 sheep for every person in New Zealand). The driving has been easier than expected since there are so few people on the roads. We started out visiting some caves in Waitomo – videos didn’t turn out too well because it was so dark but on the top of the cave we saw some really cool glowworms that are not found anywhere else in the world. In one cave there were so many that once our eyes adjusted to the darkness we could actually see each other without any addition light. Then we went to the 238 square mile Lake Taupo which lies in a caldera created by a super volcano eruption about 26,000 years ago. The town of Taupo, right by the lake, was more interesting to the kids because it had a really great playground. Our next stop was Huka Falls which had unbelievably blue water. 220,000 liters of water flows out of Lake Taupo every second, goes through the falls (really more like long steep rapids) and dumps into New Zealand’s longest river. From there we visited a geothermal park. The different colors of the water come from different minerals that leach out of the rocks. Finally we took a 3 hour ferry ride (with our car) from Wellington to Picton on the South Island.