Our last day in New Zealand

Attending the beautiful Hamilton Temple was a wonderful start to our last day in New Zealand!

The girls loved the Temple visitor center.

After the temple, we drove to a beautiful beach near a small town named Raglan West. The girls were
getting tired of travel at this point, and we knew some beach time would be good for them.

Addy was so excited to find this seashell heart. 

I don't remember how Torah got the bruise on her nose. She is so energetic and is constantly getting bumps and bruises.

A little ice-cream break!

 

           Our our way to yet another beach, we drove past one more Lord of the Rings site. The big rock in the distance was the film location for "Weathertop." We would have enjoyed hiking over to the rock,  but it is fenced in on private property. It was still worth the small detour to see the rock since it was such a scenic drive.

                                     

We spent our last parked next to a gorgeous beach in the tiny town Port Waikato.

I love our playful girls. They sure enjoy running around on the beach.

Such a lucky girl! Ice cream twice in one day! We were resorting to desperate measures to keep the girls happy! They really were tired of the motor home by this point, and ready to return to Manila! It was a wonderful trip though and we are so grateful we had the amazing opportunity to see so many beautiful places.

The next morning we drove to Auckland, packed our suitcases, returned the motor-home, and then flew back to Manila. Goodbye for now New Zealand! We sure hope we have the chance to visit NZ again some day. :)

New Zealand Day 9

We were excited to tour one of the Waitomo Glowworm caves! Torah was so tired and she fell asleep just before we entered the caves. She slept for about half of the tour, and when she awakened she was happy to see the glowworms. The cave has an underground river and the tour is given on a raft connected to a rope.  You are asked to turn off the light on your helmet once you are on the raft, that way your eyes can adjust to the dark and you can see the glowworms. At first you can barely see the light from the tiny glowworms, but by the time you are in the pitch black for 15 minutes the entire ceiling glows with little blue lights. Addy had a great time and thought the worms looked like stars.  

                          We toured another nearby cave after seeing the glowworms.

      I don't remember the name of this waterfall. There are so many gorgeous waterfalls in New Zealand.

     Our next stop was Mangapohue Natural Bridge. We were the only people there, and it was one of my favorite stops of our trip. It was so peaceful and lovely. I think that I appreciated it more because our trip was almost over, and I knew that we would all miss having so much time to spend enjoying nature.  All of the pictures below were taken at the natural bridge and the loop track back to the carpark.

   
            The silly girl would not let go of the bowl, even after all her snacks were finished.