Waitomo...

Next stop on the Kiwi Experience bus was Waitomo, a place I had really been looking forward to going to as you can go into caves and see glow worms! Rather than taking a relaxing boat cruise through the cave we opted to try black water rafting or also know as the Black Labyrinth. As so many of us had signed up our group of 12 had to go early the next morning so to kill time during the day 3 of us found a weird little museum showing an educational film about glow worms. After being thoroughly bored by that we went back to the hostel to watch whatever New Zealand T.V. had to offer, we settled with the Ellen Degeneres show. So up bright an early again the next day the 12 of us made our way to the caves. We first had to get into our wetsuits which was by far the worst part of the experience. It was already a pretty cold day and the wetsuits were already wet and really, really cold. Once suited, booted and helmeted up we headed down to the caves each grabbing a rubber ring and had a practise jumping backwards into the water holding the rubber rings on our bums as we were to be jumping this way from waterfalls inside. The water was freezing and we were told was only going to be colder once we were in the cave. Being a little claustrophobic I was quite nervous going into the cave especially when I saw the entrance but I was assured it was huge once we were inside and after finding a fellow claustrophobic in the group felt a bit better as we decided to stick together. We all took it in turns to enter the cave and wait in the dark for everyone to get in, after a few group photos we made our way through the cave. The water level got higher the further we went in so we all sat in our tubes and then we came to a part that terrified me, we had to lie right back in our tubes and push ourselves through a tiny space with the roof of the cave uncomfortably close to my face. This only took at the most a minute to get through however and we were back into a big space just in time for our first waterfall which we were to jump off, backwards, into the dark. After this we formed a human eel with our tubes by hooking our feet under the arms of the person in front and floated through the cave. We turned off our headlights making it pitch black, we all looked up and all you could see was the glow worms, they looked like stars it was brilliant. Finally we made our way to the exit of the caves, made our way back to the office where we struggled to get out of our wetsuits, had a hot shower followed by bagels and soup. It was then back to the bus to head straight to Taupo.