Sunday 28th February

I'd forgot to mention I'd been made responsible to book and organise the first week of our trip - the North island while Nick was to sort out the two weeks in the south. So reading on you will see how heavily scheduled the first week was to be fitting everything in......!
An early rise and we were ready to go on our 3 hour Black Labyrinth tour around Waitomo caves. I was still feeling a bit run down and also a bit concerned of what to expect of the cave tour. Vicky and Dave who I'd met in Australia had said when I booked the caves that they are supposed to be very tight enclosures and as I get claustrophobic felt a bit unsure of it. We got to the caves just in time - for a few days we were still getting used to having everything packed away in the van, the power cable out, the gas off etc and so time keeping hadn't been great! We climbed into our wet suits, shoes and helmet and were taken to a mini bus to drive us to the cave entrance. Nick then had a panic that he'd left the campervan key on the table in the main reception area so was partly worrying about this...

Before entering the cave, our two guides had us pick our rubber rings and sit in a chain and hold each others ankles which they wanted us to again do once in the water in the cave. We then had to test the size of the rubber ring for us and practice jumping backwards in the water - which is what we were going to have to do off ledges in the cave. We each took it in turns to stand on the edge of the river and after a 3, 2, 1 countdown jump off a plank backwards into it. I swallowed half of the river and the water was freezing but it was pretty fun to have thrown myself into it and Nick also managed it fine.

About 12 of us were then led into the cave and sat down to be told a bit about them and make sure our head torches were working. We were led through in a line climbing up and down through narrow and wider tunnels, the current of the water was quite fast and it was really different to anything I've done before. We were sat down at one point and all turned our head torches off so we were sat in the dark staring up at the glow worms on the ceiling. It looked as you can probably imagine like lots of glowing dots above us and the guides told us a little bit about them, how and why they glow and that they are actually maggots not worms. We carried on and had to do two jumps backwards in the dark down into the black river. I was fine for the first one but on the second slipped backwards before he'd finished the countdown which is probably for the better, I landed fine in the ring with a squeal.

My favourite part was probably where we then connected in the chain holding each others legs over our rings and again turned all lights off an floated through in the blackness just staring up at the ceiling full of glow worms. At one point one of the guides had walked down to the side of me and as it was so black I didn't realise he was there and felt a hand on my rubber ring which I held onto thinking Nick, who was behind me, had put his hand forward to me and then when I looked again realised someone was stood there and had to embarrassingly apologise for grabbing onto his hand. Thankfully he just laughed and said he thought I was just scared...I explained I thought he was my boyfriend. Oops. Towards the end Nick and I managed to float ahead turning our lights off and it felt like we had the whole cave to ourselves. We messed around racing one another and then climbed out at the other end to go get out of the cold wet suits. Our campervan key was in my bag all along and we got some hot soup and a bagel as part of the tour and sat chatting to three women, two who were from Brisbane in Oz about their travels.

We then drove onto Rotorua to check in at Waiteti trout stream holiday park, a less commercialised place I had booked next to a river which I thought would have been nice to try out. We checked in and Nick borrowed a fishing rod. The weather was nice so we went for a stroll down the river bank and I sat until the sun set, relaxing and reading whilst Nick gave fishing a go. An hour later he'd had no luck so we went back and used the site kitchen to cook a chicken curry for dinner. That night we watched the rest of the hobbit ready for our trip in the morning and went to sleep.

xxx