Waitomo Caves

Yesterday Holly and I took a trip to Waitomo Caves, which is about 3 hours to the east (and practically on the other coast because the country is so stinkin' small!). We got their five hours early (we left at sunrise just in case we got lost because Holly's sense of direction is even worse than mine!), so we decided to take a trip up the road to see what we could find to do. So, we at a little cafe and then went off to Hamilton, which is about an hour away. So we walked into this one place and discovered...ohmigosh...it was a mall! Tears of happiness began to well up in my eyes, but since we had only 20 minutes to spend in the mall, there was no time to cry! We went to a surf shop and I bought a purse and a pair of board shorts for Sara.

We made it back to the caves a couple minutes late, but no worries...kiwis are pretty laid back about that sort of thing. So we piled into a 4x4 with 4 English tourists and 1 New Zealand tour guide and drove to this little shack about 10 minutes away. There we put on our gear: "togs" (swimsuits), wetsuits, socks, "gumboots," a helmet with a light on top of it, a huge battery back on our backs (for the light), and a harness with some huge honkin' carabiners. I only sang "Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters!" three or four times (trying to limit the annoyance level of the media influenced Americans). The wetsuits were still wet from the last people that wore them, the helmets were probably lice-infested, and my socks were soaked before I even put the boots on. Do you know how much I hate wet socks?

Anyway, it was all right. Unsanitary, but all right. We hopped back in the 4x4, drove another 10 minutes, and arrived at some hole in the ground. Ahh, it was the caves...

So we hooked ourselves up and rappelled ("abseiled") down into the caves. Sweet. Then we walked up the caves a bit, through about 2-3 feet of water with these lights on our heads. It was like Pirates of the Caribbean again (where's Johnny Depp when you need 'im? Orlando wasn't there, either. Darnit.). So the we finally hop into our inner tubes and float down these caves, and after a while we turned our lights off and floated through. It was cool because there were all these glowworms everywhere, so it looked like thousands of blue stars were all around us.

Now let me tell you about glowworms. I don't think we have them in the United States, but I could be wrong. I've never seen them. They glow because they're actually larvae of some weird sort of fly and the glowing is some sort of gastric acid in their bellies. Sick sick sick, right? Well, it looks cool anyway.

The caves were really cool with all their stalactites and stalagmites and so on, too, of course. Yes it was all very awesome...probably the best thing I've done here so far. When we were done, we had to do a little rock climbing out, which was actually a lot easier than it looked...because you know how cave walls look all slippery. But actually, the way the caves were formed was pretty cool because the rocks had formed little things that were just like handles. Sweet. It was a little complicated being in a wetsuit that was too big and a wetsuit jacket that was too small with gumboots on that were really uncomfortable and offered no support...but oh well, it was cool anyway!

That whole ordeal took about 5 hours and then Holly and I headed home. We had a busy day. Daylight savings time just ended (we had "Fall back") so I am now a whopping 19 hours ahead of all of you, sadly...

Today was beautiful. It was about 80 degrees...I slept till 11...I got up, sat in the sun and read my book, and made fresh squeezed lemonade (Brigitte and Russel had never had it). I ate some homemade plum pie (mmmmh!) and then I went kayaking. Then I did my laundry and hung it up on the line (which is a real pain), and then I went to the movies with one of the other teachers to see Cold Mountain. Good movie!

Kayaking is way fun and I hope to do more of that. Boy are my arms sore.

And I was just reminded that I gotta go take my clothes down. Sigh.

Lesson of the Day: Don't watch romances when your boyfriend is thousands of miles away. :-(