Wicked Waitomo

Waitomo is a tiny little village which has pretty much only sprung up due to the tourism surrounding its amazing glow worm caves. We were staying at a backpackers which was, once again, in the middle of nowhere so we didn't even get to see it! We arrived and had to spend a bit of a dull afternoon evening just chilling out as we knew we had an early start the next day for our caving adventure. We had signed up for the full "rap, rock n raft" package which involved abseiling, caving, blackwater rafting and rock climbing as well as the chancew to saee one of the best glow worm caves on offer.

I was pretty nervous when we signed in the next day and our "wacky" guide didn't help matters much by promising "not to kill us" then adding "well, probably not anyway- i killed a few last week so thats my yearly quota"- GULP!

There were only three of us in the group (Rose, me and a german guy who bucked the trend by acvtually having a sense of humour!) which was pretty good as i always prefer small group adventures (more chance of someone noticing if you get sucked off into a cave rapid or get stuck in a rock!)

We set off and  got kitted out in wet suits, ridiculous baggy trousers (to stop snagging the wetsuits on rocks) and wellie boots- my we looked sexy! (good job I've gone off germans since my gay peter experience!) We got to the site and got briefed on the 27 metre abseil descent down to the caves below. I was a bit nervous but there are so many safety ropes that i figured even if i did nothing I'd still make it to the bottom in one piece. In the event it was really good fun and was over far too quickly! We picked up our rubber rings and sloshed our way through the water into the dark depths ahead and, after some time, we out our rings down and took a seat on a ledge. Our guide, Neil told us to turn off our head lamps and we were amazed by the ammount of glow worms on the cave ceiling- iot looked as though we were looking up at the stars! We learnt all about glow worms and saw one close up (they're actually larvae which hatch into flies have sex for 4 days and then die!) After that it was time to float down the cave streams in our rubber rings (blackwater rafting) which was incredibly peaceful as all we,could see without our lights were glow worms and eerily glowing stalactites) Neil then decided that we should do some proper caving so we were asked to squeeze through little holes, much to our amusement as we inevitably got stuck at certain points and had to be shoved from below/behind! We had a swim ion one of the caves and continued to explore before finally rock climbing our way back to daylight.

It was a fantastic experience and one which I'd recommend to anyone- it was so cool to go with a company who have the cave to themselves so that we didn't have to share the glow worm experience with loads of other people.

Suitably exhausted we started the 6 hour drive down to near Wellington to see our lovely family friends who had kindly invited us to spend christmas with them. We passed the journey by singing along to " A Boney M Chirstmas" on the CD player- made me feel quite festive despite the sunshine!

More on our time in Wellington in the next chapter.