The next day we headed south from Hamilton towards Waitomo Caves after watching England beat France in the Six Nations. We decided to take the scenic route via Pirongia and had a lunch of Mrs Macs pies in Kawhia on the coast. It turns out that all there is in Kawhia is the pie shop/petrol station and a grocery store plus a few small fishing boats so after we had sampled the delights we headed on our way. We headed off through the Pirongia Forest on a dirt track which wasn't actually that bad to drive on and much better than the spine-jarring tracks in Chile and on Easter Island. Amusingly on a number of fences as we passed were signs saying "Do not shoot any animals" - they obviously have issues here but we weren't sure what the "shooters" might be after. It became obvious later on as we passed hilly areas with stags and deer in them but at the time we were wondering what they were on about.
We then decided to spend the night in Te Kuti as from the road map there looked to be a few shops there to get something to eat. Our dinner was probably the worst Chinese takeaway we have had - it was meant to be chow mein but there wasn't much chow or mein in it but a whole stack of cauliflower. The chips we got to go with it weren't much better so we hit the sack ready for the next days adventure in Waitomo Caves.
The next day we started off in the Glowworm Caves - they're actually glowing larvae rather than worms but I guess "Glowmaggots" doesn't sound too nice to attract the tourists. The caves were massive inside with one impressive cavern called Cathedral Cave where they have had a number of performances including Dame Kiri Te Kanawa as the acoustics are apparently excellent.
The last part of the caves was on a boat in the pitch dark. On the ceiling were thousands of glowworms which made the roof of the cave look like it was covered in stars.
We drove back up to the Waitomo Caves and got ready for the next adrenaline adventure of black water rafting - a bit like white water rafting but underground if you were wondering.
We had to wear lovely figure hugging wetsuits and jackets, helmets with head torches on them and white wellies that were cut down to make them ankle boots - lovely ! Just as we were about to leave a woman from an earlier tour arrived back at the caving centre in a wheelchair having done something to her ankle - oh dear ! We were then loaded into a minibus with the rest of the rafters and driven about 10 minutes up the road to a section of the river that flows out of the cave. After selecting our rubber ring that was to act as a raft we were led out onto a pier about 6ft above the river and taught how to leap off a waterfall backwards to avoid hitting the ledge at the bottom. Once we'd all mastered leaping into the freezing water we walked up to the cave entrance and headed underground. Not being a fan of caving and suchlike Maud wasn't too happy but not wanting to look like a wimp followed everyone else into the cave. The first section was wading through knee deep water in a low tunnel for about 500m until we got to the first waterfall. The guides had made out that the waterfalls were quite high but when you got on the edge you realized that it was only about 4ft down. So we all leapt off. Cold and wet we then paddled through the dark caves in our tubes for about 15 minutes until we got to the next waterfall. This was a bit higher than the first with a ledge at the bottom that you had to clear. Once we had all conquered this avoiding injury we headed on through the caves in our rubber rings. The last section we were told to turn off our head torches and find our own way out in complete darkness. Maud was having a bit of a wig out at this so had the odd flash of light and before we knew it were back in daylight.
After hot showers and some soup & bagels we hit the road again heading for Taupo. After an easy couple of hours driving, only having to stop to allow a house to pass us (someone literally moving house) we arrived in Taupo, found a campsite and headed to the local pub for dinner.
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