After having a home cooked breakie with an excitable spaniel watching on we packed up and left the B&B for Waitomo.

Driving into the sunshine I kept my eyes peeled for the perfect place to live - my prerequisites being rocks to climb, green hills to roll down, river to swim in, and a splattering of some trees for good measure - I don't want much eh....

After heading through farming land with countless moo moo's we found our roof for the night - a converted Bristol Bomber of Vietnam fame in Waitomo. Waitomo realy was a little blink and you miss it town but with the sun shining and all the green hills it had some charm! We suddenly realised it was midday and we hadn't eaten which wasn't the best idea before activities so we found the pub = apparently one of the best pulling pubs in NZ and ordered some curly fries and a wedge of chocolate cake. My god was it a wedge! Huge!!

The 15 minute drive we thought we had back the The Legendary Black Water Rafting Company was actually 2 minutes and we wandered in to start our next adventure. After another 20 minutes trying to get kitted up on wet wetsuits, we were sorted and back on the bus to head to the cave. After a quick hose down in the van, we arrived and had another abseiling lesson before conquering the cave. The hourglass shaped 35m drop into the cave was not to be sneezed at and the guide helped me feel calmer by pointing out that it was always the little people who got worried about getting stuck and that perceived fear was an academic study and had ruined everything for him! the head sock, didn't help though as he gleefully told us about hanging from your scalp if your hair was to get caught. oh dear!

The caving was fun if not a little hairy at times, with the flying fox zip wire in the dark and the frequent stops for chocolate, flapjacks and hot drinks, we had great fun learning about the depressing life of a glowworm - glows, mates, dies. They were so pretty down there as we bobbed along and then we took the challenge of climbing back up some waterfalls to get out. Bob made a hash of a low hole we had to climb through and I nearly didn't make it through as he squirmed in the running water flow but with some encouragement from the Canadian girls who made it through after, I left the caves the brave way!

Back to our Bristol Bomber fighter plane at Billy Black's Woodlyn Park, we played around the plane for a bit and enjoyed the last of the sun, we then headed over to a pizza joint for some dinner and i finished my ice cream off back at the plane while rob, intent to see the donkey up on the hill, had a run in with the rather large pig mate of the donkey and scampered back down!!

Face the fear
Bomber Bristol
Waterfall climbing
Meal of going through
Anzac
Zip line
Air hostess
Massive lunch before at hick pub
Pizza dinner
Hair trapped
Crash course abseiling
Glow worm idea