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Because we had been awake for about 30 hours with only half an hour sleep here or there we slept until 11am this morning, we had some oats for breakfast and made a move. Adam had read about some Glowworm Caves that he wanted us to check out so we made our way down to them. We got there in the afternoon and there's about 4 companies all running caves tours and doing different stuff, you can go tubing down a river in the caves and see glowworms or you can abseil down in to caves and see them or you can just walk. Other than the walking tour, all the other ones were too expensive for us to do so we just did the walking one. It was $50 each and we were the only ones on the tour at the time we did it. Ross, our guide, said he was paid hourly so we could spend as much time in the cave as we wanted as he preferred to be down there anyway! We drove a short way to the entrance to the cave, which was on a farm. Ross told us that if a cave is found under your land then you also own the cave and some people rent their caves out for tours... We walked down loads of steps to a door which was the entrance to the cave, they were told by some health and safety people that they weren't allowed to lock the door to the cave which Ross said was a concern for them as they didn't want people just wandering in to the cave, so in an attempt to stop people coming in they put a fake handle on the wrong side of the door so when people pulled or pushed it it wouldn't open as it was the other side of the door! Pretty clever we thought! As you would expect the cave was really dark, Ross kept lightning candles along the way and he also had a torch. The cave was really impressive, there were loads of glowworms and just some of the rock formations and stuff were impressive. We managed to get some decent photos even though it was so dark and we didn't have the tripod with us. Because it was just the 2 of us on the tour, Ross took us on some bits not normally included on the walking tour which was cool. The water running through the caves was so clean, Ross said it was fine to drink so Adam had some and said it was lovely. Throughout the cave were some small LED lights which were 0.5watts and they are powered by one small solar panel just outside the cave, apparently they only use half of the power from the solar panel even in winter when not as much sun!! The cave was really well planned out and Ross said that it was himself and a couple of others who put all the paths, fences and lights in etc. When we got out of the cave, Ross told Adam about a place not far away where we could wild camp and no-one came to check on the place and they had nice walking trails if we wanted to do them tomorrow. When we got there we made some spag bol and ate it on the picnic benches outside. Some other people started turning up which we thought was odd as it was about to get dark. We played a few hands of cards and then Adam decided he wanted some chocolate so we set off back to near the caves where there was a convenience store. We got there and it had closed for the day!! We drove back towards where we were going to sleep and went past to see if there was somewhere in that direction where we could get some. We drove for a while and then decided that there was no point going back to where we were going to camp as we'd come quite far in the direction we planned to go. We ended up driving for 2 hours before we came across a petrol station so we filled up, got some chocolate and some scourers for washing up and headed on to find somewhere else to sleep. We ended up in a large lay by at the side of the road, it was right enough so we got the camper ready, played some more cards and went to bed.
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