"An Around-the-World-Ticket for Two, Please."

The next day we drove to Waitomo and went to the information centre to find out about the caving options. We got there about 12.30, and found out we could go on the 2pm trip, so had a very quick lunch, found a campsite and got ourselves down to the cave trip centre! I was feeling a bit nervous about this as I did not want to do any squeezing through tiny holes etc, but they said the squeezes were optional, so felt ok about it! We got suited and booted, wetsuits, thermal tops, wellies, and helmets and taken in a bus the ten minutes to the cave site. Our guides, Jed and Neill were really great, and we had a small group of seven of us. There was a place to practice our abseiling down a hill, which we all did fine, and then it was time to enter the cave! We had to abseil one by one down into it, and it was an hourglass shape, wide at the top, then it got skinny, then wide again. Luckily you couldn’t really see this from the top! I was feeling quite nervous about this part, as you are completely in control of the rope, which scared me! I would rather someone lowered me down, but that was not an option! So, two people went down first, then the guide told me it was my turn. He could tell I was a bit nervous, and so was really nice and kept me chatting to distract me, got me rigged up and sent me on my way. The other guide was at the bottom, and could pull my rope taut at anytime to stop me, so I felt safe, just nervous! So I began lowering myself down, and posed for a photo, then got down a bit further where you can’t see from the top, and saw the little hole I had to lower myself down through!!!! It was pretty small, and dark, luckily we had head torches! Kept breathing and just got on with it as I had no choice, got through ok, and then the cave opens out to a huge cathedral! Got all the way down and was so relieved to be down! Waited for the others while having a look around, there were some great fossils to look at. When the whole group was down Jed talked to us about which walls we could touch, and which we shouldn’t, as you can damage thousands of years of growing stalagmites and tights with one touch! We walked though some pretty cool caves with some amazing formations on the ceilings, and then came to a zip wire. We were hooked up in turn, all lights were turned off, and then we were sent down. The whole ceiling above us was lit up with glow-worms, it was magical!!! After we had all descended we sat along a wall which had a river at the bottom, with our legs dangling over, and were given a cup of hot chocolate and a flapjack! It was all a bit surreal, being underground, in cave, lit up by glow worms, drinking hot chocolate! After the nice little treat we were given a rubber tube and had to jump off the edge forwards and land sitting in our tube. I watched the first guy do this, and he made such a splash, and went straight under which put me right off! I decided to take the easy option and go down the stairs, however, at the last minute I decided I should do it, with a bit of cajoling from Ben! Got very wet and dunked under, but glad I did it! Now for 'Black Water Rafting'! This is not white water rafting in the dark, it's a lot more sedate than that! It's just like a lazy river ride along in the darkness of a cave, no rapids at all! So we all lined up along the side of the cave, where there was a rope, and used it to pull oursleves along the river. We kept our headlights on in this direction to have a good look at the cave formations, and then would go back in the pitch black! The water was cold, a chilly 12 degrees, so had to keep moving to keep warm! We got to the end of the rope and went a bit further to see a new entrance to the cave forming. Lots of water was pouring down from above and Jed told us one day it would all cave in and make a new entrance to the cave. Jed then told us all about glow-worms, and how they are not a worm, but a maggot, and the glowing light is actually their poo! They attract flies etc to the light, which get caught in these silk dangly things the glow-worm makes which can be up to 2 metres long, and then they eat them! Then they cacoon and become a fly, only for a couple of days, mate and then die! The glamorous world of glow-worms! To go back Jed hooked us all up in a long line, with one persons boot under another persons arms etc, and pulled us all along, with no lights on, it was pitch black!!! It was so cool seeing all the glow-worms lighting the place up, it was so magical, even if it really was poo! We ditched the rubber rings, we did the 'drunken stumble' which is how it looks and feels when you try and walk through the shallow river bed along the cave!!!! It was quite a long walk, and because of how eneven it is below your feet, you stumble this way and that, and maybe take a tumble! Ben fell over 4 times quite spectacularly, but no injuries!!! We stopped again for a drink of hot juice and a big block of chocolate! Neil told us to pour the drink in our shoes if we didn't want it, and it would warm us up! That is what I did!!! Then the cave gets a bit smaller, and you find yourself crouching a little, and the walls are much closer on either side! There was a silver slide at the end of the river to go down headfast which we all did and then it was time to make a decision! We could take the 'Path of Tranquility', or the 'Doom and Death route', which included climbing up some waterfalls and some pretty small spaces, which did not appeal to me at all! I decided to have a look through and see it, but even the beginning of this route was through a small hole, so I didn't even want to have a look!! I do not like the thought of squeezing through small spaces at all, so this route was not the one for me! Ben was a bit disappointed, but I think it's a good idea for there still to be a few things that he does that I don't, afterall he is the adrenaline junkie!!! I wasn't the only one either! The other two girls also took the easy way out! So we went a very sedate way out of the cave, with a climb up some steep rocks at the end, into the dusk evening! It was funny that it was getting dark, I had just imagined coming out to the day light again, but of course we had been down there for hours! We walked around to the point where the other would emerge, which was a hole with a waterfall running down it! One by one they emerged climbing up the waterfall out into the world again! They were all pretty puffed, it seemed a lot more effort than our route! Ben was raving about it, and he was the only one in the group to go through the really small squeeze hole, which he was really proud of! Had a walk back to the cars, then back to the base for a nice hot shower!!!! They gave us hot soup and bagels and showed us the photos they had taken on the way around, which we bought of course! They are on CD though, so we need to get them on a memory stick for our mini-laptop, so will put them up when we have done that! Headed back to the campsite and the weather got pretty yucky! It rained most of the evening, so we kept warm and watched DVDs and had hot toast and jam!!!