Woke up next day intending to drive straight to Waitomo to see the glow worm caves, after a visit to the information centre we had a look round a small free gold mining museum as Waihi was an old gold mining town. There was also a huge open mine in the middle of the town and a blasting was planned for 2pm but we couldn't be bothered staying around that long so we headed off to see a huge gorge near by. It was pretty good and had some pitch black tunnels you could walk through which we needed our torches for.

After the gorge we headed down the road to a small town called Paeroa, which sells a famous New Zealand drink called L&P, World Famous in New Zealand is the catch phrase I think. Bought some and got our pics taken with a giant bottle of L&P.

Drove into Hamilton and picked up some information on the caves, drove off to Waitomo which turned out to be tiny but heaps of folk had recommended the black water rafting to us so we wanted to do it. Booked that and stuffed our faces with Dinner, found somewhere to sleep and got ready for some sleep.

Woke up and realized we left our 2 fold away chairs sitting in the middle of the park all night, luckily there were still there, our black water rafting wasn't until 1 pm so we farted about on the internet for a while, there is nothing to do in Waitomo so wasting3 hrs inst easy. Headed back at 1 and met the rest of the group. Our guides were a wee bit mental and were talking an amazing amount of crap even before we'd left the shop. We all got wet suited up, luckily Brid found a wet suit that fitted her so she was happy. We headed off to the entrance of the caves and practiced some abseiling down a small hill. This was probably the most perverted tour I've even been on, the guides were constantly talking about sex, and I thought it was funny but an older French Canadian couple didn't have similar senses of humour I think.

We abseiled down about 60metres into the caves and it was pitch black at the bottom, once everyone was down we walked for a couple of minutes to a cliff with a flying fox hanging off the edge, somehow I was picked to go first, you couldn't see the bottom so I had no idea where I was going. I shouted some abusive language on the way down but so did most folk so I wasn't too worried. Had a wee bit of lunch and were then handed our rubber rings, we had to jump off a small cliff about 4 meters or so into the dark water and not fall off the ring, I think everyone managed it, even Brid. We all paddles deep into the cave without our lights to look at the glow worms, we also learned that the reason glow worms glow is because its there s*** that glow, nice. We headed back on foot through the water and went over some slides and through some small holes lastly we climbed 3 water falls before coming out on the surface again. After showering and getting dressed and buying some of the over priced photo's they'd taken we headed off to Rotarua.