With our Kiwi Bus ticket we had a free bus journey to Waitomo thrown in. The only downside was that we had to pay to do the caving and get up early to catch the bus. We had a nutty driver she didn?t seem to know her left hand from her right foot!! Once she had everyone on board we had a 2 hour journey to reach Waitomo. We arrived at 9.45am about 30mins later than planned as the driver was an idiot. We paid up at the counter to do the Black Abyss which was a full 5 hour journey exploring the caves. We had a small group of 5 (3 brits, 2 Danes) and we had to get suited in Wetsuits, funky boots and harnesses. We didn?t exactly look brilliantly but it was part of the fun as we were warned it was pretty cold in the cave. We reached the cave around 10:45am and practiced some abseiling skills. Ben wanted to go first as he was a little nervous so he abseiled 35 metres into the cave which was awesome. Ria was 4th to go and was a little nervous as she had to pull herself down the rope as she didn?t weigh enough to go naturally down, once she reached the bottom she was pretty happy that she didn?t weigh enough because it proved she wasn?t fat!! Zane was our guide and he was tiny but full of great knowledge he took us our short walk to our next activity which was the ?Flying Fox? into the pitch black. As Ria was the most nervous he decided to strap her up first as he knew it would scare the living hell out of her. Once she was strapped in he released her and she quickly woke up anything living in the cave with the loudest scream ever. We all went one-by-one and it was a great laugh just flying into the dark. Our next stop was a tea break with a gorgeous flapjack biscuit to raise energy and warm up as it was dark and cold. The adventure carried on 10 minutes later as we started ?Tubing? through the cave. Zane told Ben that he was to go first and he had to jump 5 metres off the rock edge into the freezing water and land his bum in the inflatable tube?didn?t sound easy but everyone didn?t it easy enough after Ben showed it was easy?the only problem again was when you hit the water it felt like a thousand knifes hitting your skin the water was that cold. Zane took us slowly down the caves river in the pitch black and showed the beautiful features such as the ?Glow-worms? which light up in the dark and hang from caves ceiling with a sticky thread glowing in order to catch prey. But it actually looks like stars in the sky and is just beautiful to look at; there is also ?Stalagmites? and ?Stalactites? which is a beautiful formation of water crystal made over thousands of years. Zane was constantly surprising us with great features of the cave. The last activity we had planned after enjoying the relaxing tubes was to climb out of the cave which wasn?t going to be easy. We had to climb up through stone cold waterfalls with water gushing straight onto our faces, we also had to climb on our fronts through the tiniest of holes and had to contend with massive spiders and other ugly bugs and sometimes we needed to climb down in order to go up which involved big vertical drops where you rely on your hands and knees to hold you in between the narrow walls. It was scary stuff at times but was so much fun and Zane knew exactly what to do and to make you feel safe.We eventually resurfaced around 3.15pm and had a hot shower and the company provided us with hot soup and bagels which was a great touch to finish the day off as we were pretty cold and absolutely shattered. We returned back to our hostel around 7pm and as you can imagine got some much needed sleep after an awesome day in the black caves!!