Hello!

We are now in Rotorua, our penultimate stop in New Zealand. We arrived here yesterday evening after a day trip to Waitomo. Waitomo is famous for it's glow worm caves and they offer lots of activities during which you can spend time in the caves. We chose to do black water rafting, which isn't actually rafting at all, but a five hour adventure deep underground. Our trip was called the Black Abyss and its probably the craziest thing I've ever done!

After being kitted out in wetsuits, helmets (complete with head torches) and harnesses, we entered the caves by abseiling 35 metres through a vertical dark tunnel. Having never abseiled before, it wasn't as scary as I thought it'd be, although I do have some rope burns. Even Fin was a bit nervous entering the pit and he's abseiled many times. Once inside, our guide led us through the cave until we reached an opening. We then descended further underground via zip wire in the total darkness. This was so much fun! From there, we had to get into the river running through the cave. Unfortunately, this involved jumping off a rock holding onto our big rubber rings. I chose to do a smaller jump as I am somewhat of a wuss, but Fin jumped from the highest point, which he later regretted as the water went straight down the back of his wetsuit! And believe me, it was very cold water!

We floated for a while on our rubber rings while our guide talked to us about the caves. The glow worms were incredible to see- like hundreds of tiny fairy lights high above us. It was also interesting to see the different fossils in the rocks as this cave had been formed in the sea. Of course, the easy part didn't last long and we were soon wading through chest-deep icy water further through the caves. We were underground for three hours but it went extremely quickly. The water was home to eels (urghh!) and we actually saw one in some of the shallow water. As well as walking through the cave, we had to fit through some pretty narrow spaces and at one point we were flat on our tummies in the water trying to get underneath a rock. It was a tight squeeze and for a little-un like me that's saying something! It was hard work but the hardest pasrt of the day was right at the end. To get out of the caves we had to climb up two waterfalls. And it was proper climbing too, no ropes or anything! It was absolutely nuts! We got some good photos from it.

Our hostel in Rotorua is really nice and today we have done the ultimate Rotorua experience- Zorbing! It was created here and it basically involves sitting inside a big sphere and being rolled down a hill. We chose to do the Zydro ride which meant there was water in there with us (warm though). It was the best fun ever, just like a water slide except we kept sliding around everyhere.

Tomorrow we are heading to Auckland. It will be our last Kiwi Experience bus ride, which we are very sad about. But we are looking forward to Auckland and we'll next update you from there.

Bye for now,

Sian and Fin xxxx