Waitomo

---

In the morning we headed to Te Puia, which is New Zealand's most well known thermal area complete with geysers, bioling mud, a live Maori arts and crafts centre and a Kiwi bird house.
We then headed to Waitomo (Wai meaning water, tomo meaning cave). The local caves, hiding under the green Waitomo countryside, are made out of limestones, which is basically very old dead fish (in this case about 40 million years old). The caves would have stayed under the sea if the Australians haden't 'puched the continental plate around' (this was apparently the origins of a famous Rugby competition known as the Bledisloe Cup). However, nowadays, even the Australians come over to marvel at the caves that rainwater has gouged out of the rock.
While we were there we decided to do something called Black Water Rafting, which can also be called cave tubing, and basically involves mouting an inflatable rubber ring and travelling through the caves water system with a helmeted torch on your head.
This was really good fun... at the same time as being surprisingly scary. It's obviously pitch black under there and the ballsy tour guide took great pleasure in explaining to us the types and sizes of flesh eating eels that can be found in the water.
Another frightening part was at the very beginning, once in the dark, when we had to dive bum first, rubber ring firmly gripped, over a waterfall, into the water and potentially an eel's hungry mouth.
Once in the stream we formed a string, grabbing the person behinds feet and travelling down the stream. The most fascinating part was when we were told to turn off our lights are we could see thousands upon thousand of glow worms above us.
We were also taught about how these 'beautiful' creatures are actually maggots. To catch their prey they hang web like dangly bits from the roof and glow brightly to attract the attention of anything flying around in the caves. As the unsuspecting prey flies toward the light they are tangled up in the thread and hastily eaten. After the larva stage life gets even grimmer, for when they turn into flies they are left without a mouth they cannot feed and die within a day. Therfore their sole purpose during this stage is to reproduce - what a life!
Apart from glow worms in the caves we could see stalactites, stalagmites, helictites, cave coral columns and probably more things that I've forgotten. It was a really enjoyable experience. Would definately reccommend it!
That night we stayed in a really cosy hostel where we had homemade bolognese (nothing like yours though, of course, Mum!).
Obviously we weren't able to get many pictures of the caving but check out some funny pics of us in wetsuits and some of the evening after.

---