Day 4 in New Zealand

Sunday April 10^th

Highlight of the day: Awesome 5 hour caving adventure

Lowlight of the day: Julia stepping on a wasp just before bedtime

Sunday was pretty packed for us. We got up early and walked to McDonald's for some breakfast (hey, it's familiar and cheap!). We drove about 20 minutes to the Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland just outside of Rotorua.  It was somewhat similar to the sights at Yellowstone We had fun walking around and exploring the various pools and got to see a geyser go off. The colors were absolutely stunning in some of the hot spring pools.

After exploring the mud pools and hot spring area, we drove about 2 1/2 hours west to Waitomo Caves. We had arranged to go on a caving tour at 2pm. We were joined by a lovely family from Melbourne and had a great tour guide named Brendon. The adventure started with us piling into a van and driving to their changing  area (converted connexes), about 10 minutes from the office. We were handed damp (cold) wetsuits and told to put them on. We then donned some "gumboots" (white rubber boots) and a helmet equipped with a headlamp. We drove another few minutes up some hilly landscape and parked the van near many sheep grazing. We tromped down to a "practice area" and learned how to abseil with a rope, which is basically repelling. We went to the entrance of the cave and started our adventure! I (Julia) was the first one to go down into the cave. It was a bit intimidating to be hanging by a rope with nothing below but the ground for about 88 feet! Once I started going though, it was great and a lot of fun! We walked through the cave and wriggled through some very narrow passages. We then got to float on an innertube and look at the gloworms on the top of the cave. We also saw many eels and petted one.  The 5 hour journey ended by us scaling a 65 foot mountain rock wall. We were both a bit pooped and felt out of energy by that time, but we managed to do it and come back alive! Overall, it was a super fun adventure and we are so glad we did it!

We checked into our hostel after the adventure and found some food at a local pub. We were both pretty tired and were sorting our things when Julia stepped on a wasp in the bathroom. It felt like a very sharp tack and stung like the dickens! Caitlyn was a great nurse and took good care of me. I took some tylenol and benadryl and went to bed. I guess I thrashed around for a couple of hours because of the pain but eventually fell asleep and got some good rest.

The caving tour company took pictures that we purchased of our adventure but we do not have access to them right now (they're on a CD and our computer doesn't have a disc drive). We'll post them at a later time.

I'm gonna hit the hay for tonight (Monday night here) but will post some of the hot spring pics later for your viewing pleasure.