Waitomo Caves, North Island

Drove from the Coromandel Penninsula to Waitamo, the notorious caves! We put on our New Zealand adventure hats and opted for the 'black labryinth' 3 hour tour - as its winter here the tourist numbers are low so it was only Mike and Myself and our crazy tour guide Terry. Our tour consisted of caving 65 metres underground in water caves, with rushing water and then rafting along underground white water on rubber rings, they call it black water rafting as its pictch black!!! We did have some light from our little head torches, didnt help much, all you could see is black and all you could hear was rushing water - it had been raining really hard before our tour so all the water from the surrounding hills was now rushing in the underground caves we were exploring!!

I have to say we were both pretty aprehensive about the whole thing, especially as the first thing the guide showed us when we entered the black watery cave was a massive water 'cricket' - this was no cricket, this was a giant 8 legged water spider that lived down here!!!!! After feeling like the water was going to push us off our feet and rush us away to an early grave we then were told we had to jump off an underground waterfall with our rubber rings, we managed this somehow, then luckily we reached the nice stuff. The underground glow worm caves were amazing, these are maggots that stick themselves to the ceiling of the cave, light themselves up to attract other insects, hang gooey threads in order to catch them ( like fly paper) - but it looks gorgeous! Then we saw the stalgamites which are amazing, we were taken to what is like an underground cathedral with these stalgamites hanging down, some are thousands if not millions of years old and are amazing! After nearly 3 hours we were starting to get a little chilly, the guide got a little worried when my teeth started chattering so had to pour hot liquid down my wetsuit to warm me up!!!

It is amazing what this island has to offer,still lots to explore! .....