Wednesday 11th March – Waitomo
Caught the Waitomo Wanderer bus down to Waitomo – a small probably inbred town which hosts a large amount of caves due to the limestone rocks. We arrived at the legendary black wter rafting company office and met up with our guides who took us black water rafting – basically caving. Got suited up in a wetsuit, helmet, torch etc and got a bus a bit out of town and arrived at the site. Quite strange because if you didn’t know the entrance to the cave was there, it could just be anywhere else. However, after a bit of practice, we abseiled 35m down into the entrance of the cave. It was actually pretty narrow at the top, often had to kick yourself away from the edge and carry on abseiling down – got darker and darker too (obviously) and we reached the bottom. When you turned off the torch you could not see a thing, but were surrounded by running water and these huge rock formations and glow worm’s arses glowing on the roofs of the cave. Was pretty awesome. We followed our guide Zane who incidentally had just two fingers on one of his hands, and apparently took this job to conquer his fear of caves, further down into the cave. The whole trip was pretty amazing, consisting of a zip line into pitch darkness with the glow worms looking like stars in the sky. We also jumped of a rock into the underwater river which was pretty cold, and floated along the river in a big tube. At the end of the trip we fitted through these tiny little spaces to get towards the exit of the cave – a series of small waterfalls which we had to climb up to leave, was such a good experience. We spent the evening in Curly’s bar playing pool, having a few beers, eating a lovely fish and chip combo and watching the local inbreds come in for a party.

Thursday 12th March – Raglan
We left Waitomo to head over to Raglan – THE place to surf in New Zealand. Apparently it has one of the best left hand breaks in the world, and is an ideal place to learn how to surf – so that’s what I did! The weather heading towards Raglan was so good, we checked into the hostel which was a really nice quirky little place set in the rainforest a short drive from the beach where you could eat, sleep and surf. Headed out for the lesson at 3 and then the rain came from nowhere! Didn’t matter too much as we had a wetsuit and were going to get wet anyway...Got down to the beach and got a board and hit the waves. We were accompanied by two hot surf chicks who guided us, told us where we were going wrong – apparently I needed to get on the board a “bit more elegantly” the first few times – very politely put I thought. I managed to get up on the board a few times, gradually improved after falling off a lot of times. The currents were really strong, and there were a lot of breaks crashing into each other which made it a bit harder than normal but still really enjoyed it. We ate a well earned pasta and chicken dinner and me and Rich sat on the sofa like two little girls watching Blue Crush for the rest of the evening.

Friday 13th March – Raglan to Rotorua
After being inspired by the surf in Blue Crush we headed down to the beach again to hit the waves – this time as professionals pretty much! Had about 3 hours of surf time, the wave were a bit better than the day before and I managed to catch quite a few, as well as falling off quite a few times. I figure the hardest bit is obviously getting in the right position to get on the wave, once you’re up on the board its actually not that difficult – managed to ride out the waves a few times and even tried a few turns. I now class myself as a surfer...
Got the bus back to Rotorua and as it was Friday night , and a foam party, we decided to head down to the bar. Played some pool with Jamie and Susie then had a few more drinks and started talking to these 3 Argentinean girls. After more alcohol and a fair amount of convincing (i needed convincing) we hit the foam. Was quite a lot of fun – standard throwing it in each others faces and smothering everyones hair. Headed out at about 3 and talked to a girl named Naomi on the stairs for about 2 and a half hours about psychology, boyfriends, girlfriends, just generally quite a few topics! Went to bed for about 3 hours then up for the bus.

Saturday 14th March – Rotorua to Auckland
Luckily the journey to Auckland only took about 3 hours or so after we seemed to think it could take about 6 hours to get here. Tried to catch up on some sleep for most of the journey, and this was pretty much the extent of the excitement for the day, apart from a nice steak and cheese pie for lunch.