Tuesday 29th December

Slept well last night which was good because today is going to be hard, climbing, abseiling and tubing through a blackened cave!! Bus was early, and we were still eating breakfast. Weather was terrible, rainy and cold. The bus journey from Rotorua was windy and I wanted to eat chocolate cake. The other four were sleeping, or had their eyes closed and I just bobbed to the coach music. The landscape was stunning, once you could see, when the fog lifted! Rolling green hills as far as the eye can see, with cows and sheep dotted around. We arrived at the bottom of the drive of Juno Hall Hostel shortly after 10am. We had to walk up a short hill to the building. Our room wasn't ready so we chilled in the communal area until it was. We have a 5 bed dorm all to ourselves which is lovely. The rap, raft and rock tour was picking us up at 12.30 so we had beans and cheese on toast before setting off to meet the mini bus at the bottom of the road. The mini bus came and drove us to the office where we paid our money and met our guide Barbara. Barbara then drove us to the cave site where we changed into sexy wet wetsuits, a hard hat with light and a harness. Our first trial was a 27 metre abseil down to the cave floor. It was amazing, and really good fun. We then tubed, and walked through the cave stopping along the way to view underground wildlife, (Jennie S had a close encounter with a spider) and squeeze through holes in the rock (Ali got her boot stuck at one and had to take it off to get through). Our final trial was a steep 20 metre climb out of the cave which was quite tricky at one point where you had to reach your leg up almost to your ear. Once out of the cave we had a short drive back to the changing rooms were we all had hot showers and changed into our dry clothes. We were then driven back to the office where we viewed the pictures Barbara had taken down in the cave and Lyndsey and I bought Rap (rappel), Raft and Rock t-shirts. Back at the hostel I had tasty packet bacon flavour pasta and Gareth had noodles.