Thursday day time saw us stop in Waitomo which is famous for its glow worm caves. Kate and I had signed up for a tour of the caves (the cheapest and least adventurous of all the tours) so weren't sure what to expect, but it was actually amazing! Firstly we went into a dry cave which had fantastic rock formations formed by water running through the limestone rock, and had a few glow worms in but the second cave had thousands of the creatures in! The glow worms are actually insects in their larvae stage and emit light to attract food but they are part of the spider family as they create silk to trap food.

On Thursday night we stayed in Mourea with a Maori tribe (the Ngati Pikiao people) and we stayed all together in their marae (a traditional meeting house). We were welcomed by a traditional performance of the Kapa Haka and some of the tribe was dressed in traditional dress. Afterwards the boys and girls got separated and the boys got taught the Haka, and the girls got taught to use a poi - not sure if that's spelt right but it's a round ball on the end of some rope which you're supposed to whirl around and catch but I kept hitting myself on the head with it! They had prepared a delicious roast chicken meal for us afterwards which was delish. The downside to that evening was my bag got left on the coach, not sure how but by the time I had finished helping with the drying up the bus had driven away so I had none of my stuff. Also I was ill in the night too so that didn't help matters! Despite this it was still a really interesting evening learning about a different culture!