We left Glen's uncle's house this morning at 7am to get to our first stop of the day: a 5 hour long cave trip that included abseiling (sliding down a cliff while attached to a rope), a flying fox (ziptrek), black water rafting (lazy river tubing... Meters underneath the surface in the dark), and jumping off things into water. We show up and turns out that were the only people on the tour! So, we also got to do some other things that were on the 3 hour tour (Labyrinth) and the 2 hour tour (walking to see a big cave with lit up stalagtites and stalagmites. It was sweet! The water was freezing but got a bit better since we were in big wetsuits. Pretty sure I was shaking throughout the whole thing... It was scary! The abseil was equivalent to an 11 storey building and it got tight in one spot... And the flying fox was done in complete darkness. But the scariest was climbing up this waterfall, which our guide stated that "we dont have ropes that are usually used to get up this but we can do it anyways, just dont fall" so I had a bit of a panic as I started to climb and kept telling him I didnt want to go... But I did, eventually and it was terrible haha. Definitely a trip to get the adrenaline pumping and to try new things... But we really got a good deal by being able to do everything that we did.
After our intense trip, we drove up to the museum then over to the original Waitomo Glowworm Caves (the one that Kate plus 8 did in thar episode) which was really nice (and dry) and our guide was really knowlegable and her great great grandfather was the one who actually discovered the cave in the first place! The boat ride to see the glowworms was the highlight, even though we saw them during the intense trip, there were waay more in this cave.
After learning waayy too much about these caves and glowy maggots we drove to Otrahunga (probs spelled incorrectly) and I went to the Kiwi House and I was the only person in the whole place! Its pretty much a bird and reptile zoo, with the main feature being the kiwis, NZ's national nocturnal flightless endangered bird. They're in an artificially dark containment, and they're the weirdest things Ive ever seen... I got a little show (by myself) sunce it was feeding time and watched them for about 15 mins just run around with their chunky little bodies and big feet and beak and just poke around then run like crazy haha it was so hilarious and strange... But they're so ugly they're cute. Lots of other New Zealand birds and reptiles that were rare and endangered, a good little place that kiwi house, especially when you're the only one there and no kids running around.
Were off to Australia in 2 days! I'll try to updare while I'm there, weve gOt a pretty jam packed schedule!
