As I'm always encouraging Richard to try new activities, some of them outside his comfort zone, I thought I ought to challenge myself and face some of my fears. As most people who know me will agree my two big hates are the cold and fish. So I decided to go to the Waitomo Caves and do black water rafting in very cold water containing fish and even worse - eels.

Richard had already stated he was going to sit this one out. I don't think he could face the embarrassment of listening to my screams if a fish touched me.

We came here from Rotorua where we had spent three days sheltering from the rain. On the day we wanted to go food shopping we found all the supermarkets shut for the morning at it was ANZAC day. We later found out it was like Remembrance Sunday and a public holiday in New Zealand and Australia. We used the rainy weather to catch up on emails and with the help of Pete in Ealing managed to book our flights back to the UK. We needed to purchase them before leaving New Zealand as part of the entry requirements to Australia they want proof of our outbound flight. So we leave Sydney on 15th Feb 2010 and fly to Singapore where we plan to spend four weeks travelling overland to Kuala Lumpur and then into Thailand before going back to Singapore to catch our plane on 10th March 2010 to London - just in time for the Cheltenham festival.

From Rotorua we drove to the iSite in Waitomo and picked up all the leaflets to select which cave trip to do. I chose Rap, Raft 'n' Rock which involves abseiling into a chasm, entering the pitch black cave where there are lots of glow worms, black water rafting through the cold underground rivers using an innertube, then squeezing through narrow passages before climbing up a rock to the outside world. I booked in for the 2pm trip on the following day.

Richard came with me to the office as we were early. Shortly after we arrived an American and Canadian turned up for the same trip. One of the question on the form you have to fill in asks for your weight in kilograms. The two girls didn't look happy about putting their weight on the form and frantically tried to work out their weight from pounds into kilograms. Richard tried several times to tell them there was a pair of scales in front of them, but I don't know whether they didn't want to weigh themselves in front of people or not because they didn't seem to hear. Looking all confused and still not being able to work out the conversion on a piece of paper, Richard tapped one on the shoulder and pointed to the scales. We both sniggered to ourselves when one girl took off her flip flops hoping it would make all the difference!

After the remaining three people arrived the group of 6 was complete so Richard left and went off to the library where we'd found they had free wifi internet.

We had a short minibus drive to the changing rooms near the caves to get fitted into our wetsuits. We squeezed ourselves into scruffy partly wet wetsuits which were torn in places and put on brightly coloured soggy over trousers. I knew we were going to get wet but it felt very uncomfortable. Next was the Wellington boot fitting. The first one I tried on had a hole in the bottom, then I noticed they all had holes drilled in the bottom, apparently allowing you to walk through the water with ease. I found a pair that fitted so the whole attire was complete.

Luckily we all had a sense of humour and just laughed at each other in our clown like outfits as we made our way to the cave. We had a brief practice with the abseiling equipment then stood in line for our turn down. As I'm on the light side I had to feed the rope through to get any kind of downward movement. I bounced into the cliff a few times before reaching the river at the bottom. The water was clear and to my relief wasn't eel infested like I'd read about in other peoples blogs. In fact I couldn't see any fish or aquatic life so made my way across the water to wait for the others.

After everyone had abseiled down we waded through the river, our socks were fully soaked by now, and into the cave. We turned our head torches off and as our eyes adjusted to the dark we could see the glow worms in the ceiling. They looked like bright stars at night in the sky.

These type of glow worms are the Arachnocampa species and the glow is the result of not having a bottom - they burn their waste producing the light. In Sri Lanka I saw a similar effect with fireflies. We were told by the guide that apart from those two species the only other that creates a white glow is certain type of jelly fish.

We sat in our inner tubes and with each person holding the legs of the one in front we sailed down the underground river. This part of the tour was most disappointing as the water levels were on the low side so we could only go a short way before our tubes hit the bottom.

The next part was the most fun though as we entered caverns caked in mud. Not dirty soily mud, more clay and creamy - the sort you may put on your face. Some of the caverns were so small we had to climb through on our hands and knees. Not being claustrophobic or a wimpy American I volunteered to lead the way.

Past the muddy caves were caverns with stalagmites sticking out from the roof. It was interesting seeing how different the caves were. They also are constantly changing shape depending on the water levels.

The final part of the trip was to climb up the 27 meter cliff near where we'd abseiled down. I was third up and although I had the safety rope attached we'd been left to put it on ourselves with no checks as the guide was at the top, so I climbed up quite steadily hoping I wouldn't slip in the wellies.

We all got up fine and headed to changing rooms to get our soaking wetsuits off and have a warm shower.

I'm glad I went on the trip. I did manage to give two eels a wide berth and was thankful for there not being more. The abseiling and climbing were the two highlights for me, something I definitely want to do again.

Katy