Saturday, March 30 - Whangerei ...

     ... or fahn-gur-eye, as the Kiwis pronounce it, is the biggest town north of Auckland, and has a few things to interest even the jaded traveler looking forward to being home.

We walked through a nice conservatory with a variety of rooms, including
a fernery, which isn't too hard to stuff full of native ferns, since NZ is
probably the ferniest country in the world.  This, of course, is an orchid.

Outside of the library are a line of pou, which are
Maori totem poles.  These have been carved by a
variety of artists to reflect the multiethnic origins
of the people of NZ.  This shows an Albanian man
with his feet in his new country, longing for his woman
 still at home, hence upside down on the other
side of the world.

This is a contribution by the Korean community

This Maori carving represents something profound,
but I can't remember what it is

Nearby, this sculpture promotes the theater 

Next we visited an old quarry that has been converted into public gardens.
Various old concrete structures, terraces cut into the hillside, and a lake at
the bottom of the quarry are incorporated into the landscape.  

One terrace is home to an arid garden with cacti, acacias, and other deserty
plants

The gardens are rather new, but with the extremely favorable NZ climate, it's
already an impressive place.  It will become spectacular in the decades ahead.

From there we inspected the Abbey Caves.  They're on private land, but
there is no admittance fee.  In fact,  it's all rather wild and undeveloped,
which we like. 

The caves are rather hard to climb down into, and have water flowing
through them.  We satisfied ourselves with a cursory look.  These
small stalactites were sorta cool.

The area around the caves was in woods, and after checking out the caverns
we explored the Stone Forest

Moss-covered limestone monoliths and rocks littered
the space at the top of the hill

The mix of trees and greenish rocks in the dim light of the woods was
weird enough ...

... with a maze of routes we were careful not to get lost ...

... then it got a little creepy when we stumbled on this solitary grave protected
by an old picket fence.  Poor Louis lived less than two years before dying
in 1888.  We wondered who is still leaving toys for the little boy.

It's enough to give me bad dreams

         Hope all your dreams are sweet and interesting.  Good night ...