Waitomo

I'm sure your thinking "Why-what-o???"....but hold on too your computer chairs....
(@!*$&~^$@*&#)!@$*!@(#&~*^!@~(*!@&#)@$   <that's right it's the time machine again!!!!
So now we are wayyy back to February 4!
And I have just arrived from Auckland to Waitomo (pronounced why-toe-moe...in case you want to speak Maori). Waitomo is a little tourist/farm town famous for it's glow caves. There are over 300 caves in the area and I think most of them have these things they call glow worms.

But backing up to before my glow worm experience. I got to my super cozy hostel and this was one where I had booked a tent for the night. I was pretty psyched and thinking I'm pretty hard core. When the lady is like, "okay, go ahead and set your tent up anywhere." And I'm like "whaaaa???" because I never remmeber reading that it was B.Y.O.T. (bring your own tent) and tent hostels do exist!!! So it's not like I'm completely dumb. Anyways....needless to stay I did NOT have my own tent, but thankfully it wasn't full and she was able to squeeze me into a dorm. So after settling in and walking around town a bit. (literally it was soo small. one main road.) I went on my caving adventure!

This was one of my highlights from New Zealand. SO. AWESOME. So I booked an extreme caving adventure. It started with rappelling 30+ meters. (Which I had never done before! It was a little scary just dangling over a whole in the ground, knowing that the guy at the other end was waaaaayyy down there. So in probably the most ungraceful way ever I rappelled/slid down the wall of the cave until I pretty much landed on my bum in the bottom). Then walking through the cave a bit (always love stalagmites and stalactites....even though I can never remember which one is which). Then a flying fox a.k.a. zip line into more of the cave (Except they hooked us up and then made us turn out our head lamps...so we were flying into the pitch black cave not knowing when we were going to stop!! And the first guy that went hit the pile of tubes waiting at the bottom with his feet, so all we heard was a giant WHACK....super comforting). Then "black water rafting" or tubing down the river to enjoy the glow worms.

They are beautiful in the caves and kind of look like stars in a night sky...except better:) When we are in the pitch black at the bottom they go ahead and ruin the moment by telling us they are not actually worms, but fly larvae....or maggots. and that the part that glows is the poop. So we are all sitting there enjoying shiny poop. But thankfully camp has made me able to appreciate that:)

Then after relaxing we stumble our way through the water for a while to some waterfalls we had to free climb up to get out. Needless to say I felt pretty extreme after all this:) But I have never been so thankful for a wet suit in my life. The air temp was like 13 Celsius and the water was even colder. So I very much appreciated my warm shower/hostel after.  Met some awesome peeps in the hostel that night and the first Americans I had seen traveling there as well. A girl on my cave tour was originally from Gilbert even!!! crazy.

You couldn't take pics in the cave but here are a few from my day in Waitomo...

Beautiful. It's hard to get tired of soo much green.

My neighbors. Literally right across the road from my hostel.

Waitomo....not the biggest town ever:)

Proof that I was there:)

Apparently they have heaps or rabbits.

The ONE main street.

Went for a walk to a look out and this little buddy was my companion.

From the look out.

Because I can:)

Yours truly decked out in all my gear on the far right. It was such an attractive outfit....