Drive Auckland to Waitomo with a stop in Te Awamutu for Museum.

Sadly, we leave Judy and the many up, down and around volcanic hills of Auckland behind us and make our way, mostly on the left side of the road, toward Waitomo to see the caves covered with glow worms. Mostly a day of travel through rain, which prevents us from seeing a kauri tree in a deep forest beside a small town, which would have been a rare treat because it may be the only one that grows south of Auckland’s latitude (remember, this tree is so sacred a 2,000-year old specimen in the far north has its own name).

The Waitomo Caves Hotel, up a winding driveway on the side of a small hill, looks like a colonial English version of the hotel in The Shining. Stretching behind a large circle of flowers around a flagpole, as wide as the White House, it is made of painted stucco and wood. Its three stories of Victorian-style carved wood windows and turrets, dark front hall with a huge vase of silk flowers, wool carpets the color of faded rust, a long dining room to the left filled with white table cloths: all of it defines the term “faded elegance.”

We unpack and David heads straight to the bar, which is past the wall of windows on the left side of the dining room, and is tended gracefully by Arnaud Berrier, a mid-twenties expat from Paris who’s here with his beautiful traveling companion before he returns to Paris and begins a financial consulting business with his best friend. He discovers that the bar has no sweet vermouth but it does have dry and it has Campari and it has gin. It’s Negroni Time!

After Arnaud makes the drink – stirred, not shaken, straight up in a martini glass – David proves uncharacteristically chatty and winds up on the terrace tables just outside the glass wall of the dining room with Craig, Liz, Peter and Jane. Four Aussies, but of the totally couth and amusing variety (NOT like the black-leather-clad gang of middle-age Aussies who arrive on Harleys tomorrow afternoon and immediately commandeer the bar, congratulating themselves as loudly as possible for being the people they are). Peter’s in iron ore mining, his wife Jane shows pix of her prized boxers (dogs, not knickers), Craig is retired and his wife still works (Craig and I hit it off ENORMOUSLY on that common note).

As Cynthia and I have dinner that night – corner table, served graciously by Arnaud – a middle-aged woman getting out of a van at the front entrance falls to the ground, cracks her nose on the edge of the brick entry steps and lies on the tarmac drive for a good 20 minutes attended by helpless family members, helpless hotel staff and helpless guests until finally an ambulance from the distant town of Hamilton arrives and, after 20 minutes of triage, whisks her and a family member away.

Dinner was delightful for us … not so much for the family whose matriarch was hospitalized. David finished the evening talking to her family, who were returning from the hospital at about 11:30 (Why TF is David up so late? Cause NZ is just THAT cool.) They’re here for an anniversary. They are Chicagoans who vacationed here 26 years ago with their daughter. They were learning to surf. They couldn’t get it and the woman who fell saw a hunky instructor down da beach and got him to teach them. A year later, he visits them in Chicago and marries their daughter six weeks later. That’s gonna last, you snidely chuckle. The Chicago couple were in Waitomo to celebrate their daughter’s and surfer dude’s 25th wedding anniversary.

Valentine’s Day. This year, we’re waxing mellow with 35 years.