WaCkY Waitomo

Trip Start Feb 02, 2008
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15
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Trip End Aug 19, 2008


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Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Me and Oonagh have kick started our New Zealand adventure fun with a five hour caving epic. The waitomo region is famous for its glow worms, and for only fifty pounds we went abseiling, rock climbing, black water rafting, caving and saw some of those amazing glow worms. The abseiling was more calming that scary. Lowering yourself into a cave sounds crazy, but it was really good fun. Black water rafting is not like white water rafting, which involves rapids. It is more like a gentle float through almost utter darkness, with only the green light of glow worm poo lighting up your way. I shall give you a little lesson in glow worms.

Insects at night naturally fly upwards towards the stars. They do this because their wings can be easily damaged if they fly into something, so their natural instinct is to fly upwards. Insects are brought in on the water that flows into caves, often just the eggs are brought in and so the insects hatch inside the cave. They see the light of thousands of glow worms, that truly look like a galaxy inches above your head. So, naturally, the insects fly to the stars only to be caught in them sticky lines of the clever little, bright, glow worm. FASCINATING.

We also did some caving. There is a fact about New Zealand adventure sports that I have been holding off for a while so as not to scare any concerned relatives, but I can not hold such information any longer so I will tell you anyway. In New Zealand you can not sue for personal injury, and if you have an accident, you get compensated  no matter who was at fault (Company or individual). So this means that you get to do much more fun adventure sports because its all nice and legal! WOO HOO. Obviously safety is still paramount, but you do get to do fun things. Like squeezing through the a tiny hole in a rock, 100 meters underground. With our caving trip we got hot squash and some free chocolate that we ate underground, in the pitch black, it was loverly. Mum, I think you especially would like caving, and if you weren't too scared I would definitely recommend it to you.

After all that squashing and squeezing and wading and floating, we did some rock climbing back out of the cave. From the ground the wall looks slippery and vertical and completely unclimbable. But it wasn't too bad, although the guide made it look easy. He literally walked up the wall without any effort! So all in all Waitomo was a pretty fun place (although the caves are the only thing to do there).

We are in Rotorua today and I think we might do some Zorbing tomorrow or the day after. This is where you get in a giant hamster ball and roll down a hill. You can also do one thats got water in, for an extra kick. So that should be fun. Apparently its a mixture between a roller coaster and a water slide.

Anyway, I must go now, to try and organize some of these adventure sports. (White water rafting is another option in Rotorua)Hope you all are safe and HAPPY,  Lots of Love Bernie xxxx
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