And Under Ground We Went

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Waitomo…also known as the city below ground. Waitomo is known for their crazy underground cave systems, and the fact you can go exploring! We signed up for a 4 hour excursion underground at 930am that turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip for me. To find out about the caves go to http://www.waitomocaves.co.nz/home/ pretty nice web site. But what we did was called the black-labyrinth trip (http://www.blackwaterrafting.co.nz/black-labyrinth.html) it was crazy awesome. There was 5 people in our group (way small usually there are 15-20) so our guide took us some extra adventures. We climbed up these 2 huge waterfalls that where inside the caves. It was kinda scary, there was a lot of water we had to go through, it was crazy strong. But well worth it. We then went on our way and did the normal trip. The opening to the cave was super tiny, I was just like you want me to fit through that hole! But it opened up into a slightly larger cave where we could stand and look at all the stalagmites and stalactites (remember when the mites go up your tights go down, sorry science joke), there where also these spotted spiders, quite large, not my favorite hehe. From there we headed into an even bigger cavern and got on our inner tubes and connected all together to form a chain. Our guide then told us to turn off our head lamps - so dark!! You could not see your had in front of your face! But then when you look up you saw the crazy amount of glow worm. They were so beautiful. If you didn’t know better you would think you where looking at the night sky. You could even pick out constellations. It was just such a crazy experience floating down this river through GIANT caverns. We were going all smoothly when our guide told us to stand up and head to the side of the cavern bc we where coming to a waterfall! Yeah we had to jump down it, prob 15 feet or so, it was really tight. We ended the adventure with a leisurely float down the river once it came back to the surface. Perfect!
After we got to take hot showers (my feet were white they were so cold), hot soup and bagels Jo, Kate, and I did a nice walk around the area, saw some crazy ferns and trees - very tropical. Climbed in our own caves we found (still really dark), over all a great day.
We then decided to drive some 5 more hours even more north towards the Bay of Islands…but again, more of that next time.

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Photos

We look rediculus!
Kate, Jo, me and the other two people

Our Own Cave
Its day 3