Blogs from Waitomo, North Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 5

Waitomo and the Caves Today we are travelling to Rotorua, but first we have a stop of at Waitomo and the caves there famous for the glow worms. Before i get into that, once again I was feeling like CRAP! Definetly gone down a few notches since the previous day. I think it was here that i really started feeling really ill and had lots of discomfort under my arm. However, like a brave soldier I found that inner stength and courage i battled on. Well Hard! As i'd been doing for the previous few days now, i popped a few regular pain killers / paracetamol and they helped me get through the day. At Waitomo caves there are several ways ou can experience the caves. For the old, sad and boring you can simply walk ... read more

Day 55: Slices of toast: 14, Lumps of prime beef: 10, Trimmed Angoran rabbits: 2, Electric shocks: 1 It wasn't a great start to the day when I was woken up at six this morning as the two women I was sharing a dorm with got up to start to start their packing (everyone knows that if you're leaving early, you pack up all your stuff the night before, especially if it's in plastic bags. Right?). Having to wake up at seven anyway, I didn't have enough time to get back to sleep, and so got up and head into town for breakfast, before catching the bus to Waitomo. Even with stops, it was only a three hour drive, and with a partially full coach and no children on board, I slept for most of the ... read more

The day began on a bus. We stopped the bus about 2 hours into the ride to see the location where lord of the rings was filmed. There we got a guided tour of the farm and the events that took place during the filming. Though I haven’t seen the movies it was still interesting to know that I was there….maybe perhaps I’ll watch them now. After the movie set we ate lunch, and quickly had to leave. Our black water rafting adventure began with putting on a freezing wet suit, and very fun boots. Once we were all geared up we jumped onto a van. We made a quick stop at to get everyone a floaty. Once we were geared up and had our floaty we practiced jumping off the wooden ledge, because in the ... read more

A split day. I went off caving doing two different activities in the morning and afternoon with a company called Waitomo Adventures. With 5 others we were minibused to TumuTumu cave. We donned our wetsuits and stylish white wellies and then after a short walk descended through a small entrance into the caves. The cave follows the course of a stream. At first it felt very claustrophobic. The cave varies from large tunnel to fairly tight squeezes. The water varies from ankle deep to so deep that it is necessary to swim. The wellies of course kept filling up. At one pool our leader showed us a large eel in the clear water. There were very beautiful stalactites, stalagmites and curtains. I’d been a bit worried about the squeezes, but none were too alarming. At ... read more

We had survived our first night in the Van otherwise known as “Dolly”. The bed is quite comfortable and we have one good pillow but the other pillow I swear is plastic! It’s got a cover on it to stop you from peeing on it; so it’s now referred to as the “Piss Pillow”! We setoff early 8.30 and head south along the M1 before joining the M3. Our first stop was at Lyntons parents place in Te Awamutu. Lyntons parents manage the local race track and his father was a jockey before he retired. Lyntons parents kindly gave us some money to put towards our next stop which was the “Kiwi House” in Otorhanga. We wandered around the enclosures for a while and watched the one Kiwi they had try to escape! It certainly ... read more