Waitomo

Day 1: Early departure from Hot Water Beach as we headed off towards Waitomo - famous for its Caves and Glowworms. Once again, it was a full morning of travel to get there, with a few scenic stops and bush walks along the way.

We arrived in the tiny village early afternoon to get checked into the hostel. After checking in, myself, James and the welsh lads headed to a nearby hotel, which is supposedly the most haunted place in New Zealand. I'm not a believer in that sort of stuff myself but we had some time to kill so went to check it out.

No Ghosts to report I'm afraid. We couldn't even get a proper look around the hotel to where they might be hiding so instead amused ourselves with a bit of Frisbee at the nearby park. Casey and Courtnie headed there after us though and got a bigger tour - they seemed a bit more convinced.

Late afternoon, myself, Casey, Courtnie, Erika, Sophie and Claire all go picked up to get involved with some Black Water Rafting, which is extremely popular around here and the main reason to visit Waitomo (Wai = Water, Tomo = Cave). The 6 of us went for the ''Abyss'' package, which involved some Abseiling, Zip-lining, Tubing and lots of climbing throughout the caves. It looked awesome.

A bit of a slow start to be honest - we got picked up at around 3.45pm and weren't actually all in the caves until past 6pm (mainly due to a huge safety briefing and some seriously slow girls abseiling down). Once we got in there though, it was quality. The initial abseil took us down about 40 metres deep into total darkness before Ziplining into the unknown. We then spent some time Tubing our way though the caves (and the VERY cold water), checking out the Stalagmites, Stalactites, Cave Coral and the thousands of Glowworms that perch themselves all around. It was a pretty awesome sight.

After wading our way through for a few hours, we finished the trip with some pretty nerve-wracking waterfall climbs to get ourselves out. This was the best part of the trip and unlike anything I've done on my previous cave experiences. After the final climb, it was so dark outside that none of us actually realised we had made it out of the cave! Another quality experience, despite the slow start. No cave I've seen compares to Kong Lor, Laos yet but this was easily the best trip for climbing through them. Well worth doing.

After some very welcome hot Soup and Bagels, the 6 of us returned to the hostel in Waitomo for the night. All the lads were down the local watching the Rugby so I made my way down there for a few Beers and a game of Poker. Another action-packed day in Kiwi land. Loving it out here.