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Nervous Turkey!
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Location Date Victoria 1437951600 Western Australia 1437692400 New Zealand 
1436223600 Queensland 1433804400 New South Wales 1430694000 -
Location Date Auckland 1436223600 Rotorua 1436050800 Taupo 1435964400 Wellington 1435705200 Kaikoura 1435446000 Christchurch 1435359600 Lake Tekapo 1435273200 Queenstown 1435186800 Wanaka 1434754800 Franz Josef 1434668400 Ruatapu 1434495600 Westport 1434409200 Kaiteriteri 1434322800 Picton 1434236400 Waitomo
1434063600 Coromandel 1433977200
Hot Water Beach to Waitomo
With a caving and underground rafting adventure booked for 2pm it was in our best interest to get to Waitomo as soon as possible today. We managed to get 50% off the price by using bookme.nz a website that a very kind lady passed onto us in Cambodia one drunken night. But one thing to note today is that we have spent a lot of money on food the last two days by not planning ahead. Turning up to places and expecting supermarkets when all you find in NZ is pricey local businesses that do not cater for the budget conscious backpacker. Therefore we screwed our heads on and switched to budget mode when we found a supermarket. We bought food for the next three days for $45 (£22) BARGAIN.
It is nice to travel on a well sign posted road network unlike Australia which is illogical and vague and the journeys are really quick as everything is so close together in NZ.
The drive took 3 hours and on arrival it was time for action. We initially thought that we were going rafting and climbing, jumping off waterfalls etc. It soon became very clear that this wasn't the case. Caving was on the agenda. 3.5 hours underground, crawling, swimming, climbing, diving through tiny spaces and huge openings in the cave system. It was completely different to anything we have attempted before. Initially thoughts were delayed as we were surrounded by spiders on our decent. At some points it was scary...... The guides would tell us to turn off the lights and crawl through 30m long passages no bigger than our shoulders wide followed by the sentence, "I'd keep them turned off if you don't want to see hundreds of spiders and creepy crawlies." All that to have one of the guides jump out at us half way through. We also had to find our way through certain sections under water and swim through the deeper parts. The highlight of the day was tubing through the cave in the pitch black to witness the hundreds of thousands of Glow worms that line the walls. It was mesmerising and reminding us of the stars the night before. We also got to see complex mineral formations and huge stalagmites and stalactites in their masses.
The water in the caves was freezing but our bodies were soothed by the log burning stove in our hostel (YHA Juno Hall) that was surrounded by comfy sofas and a telly. As we will shortly be visiting Hobbiton, we took our chance to catch up on some Lord of the rings. Why not?
M & C xxxx
With a caving and underground rafting adventure booked for 2pm it was in our best interest to get to Waitomo as soon as possible today. We managed to get 50% off the price by using bookme.nz a website that a very kind lady passed onto us in Cambodia one drunken night. But one thing to note today is that we have spent a lot of money on food the last two days by not planning ahead. Turning up to places and expecting supermarkets when all you find in NZ is pricey local businesses that do not cater for the budget conscious backpacker. Therefore we screwed our heads on and switched to budget mode when we found a supermarket. We bought food for the next three days for $45 (£22) BARGAIN.
It is nice to travel on a well sign posted road network unlike Australia which is illogical and vague and the journeys are really quick as everything is so close together in NZ.
The drive took 3 hours and on arrival it was time for action. We initially thought that we were going rafting and climbing, jumping off waterfalls etc. It soon became very clear that this wasn't the case. Caving was on the agenda. 3.5 hours underground, crawling, swimming, climbing, diving through tiny spaces and huge openings in the cave system. It was completely different to anything we have attempted before. Initially thoughts were delayed as we were surrounded by spiders on our decent. At some points it was scary...... The guides would tell us to turn off the lights and crawl through 30m long passages no bigger than our shoulders wide followed by the sentence, "I'd keep them turned off if you don't want to see hundreds of spiders and creepy crawlies." All that to have one of the guides jump out at us half way through. We also had to find our way through certain sections under water and swim through the deeper parts. The highlight of the day was tubing through the cave in the pitch black to witness the hundreds of thousands of Glow worms that line the walls. It was mesmerising and reminding us of the stars the night before. We also got to see complex mineral formations and huge stalagmites and stalactites in their masses.
The water in the caves was freezing but our bodies were soothed by the log burning stove in our hostel (YHA Juno Hall) that was surrounded by comfy sofas and a telly. As we will shortly be visiting Hobbiton, we took our chance to catch up on some Lord of the rings. Why not?
M & C xxxx
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