Rotorua to Waitomo

The departure of Rotorua to the Agrodome to check out the kiwi farm show that features 19 breeds of sheep, sheep shearing demonstrations, experience sheep auction, opportunity to hand milk a cow or feed lambs, huntaway dog - more of hunting ducks. The show is quite entertaining and commercialize, so not that much of authenticity.

Next we head straight to Waitomo (Wai – water, tomo – caves) where the local caves are made out of limestone. Stopping at the Ruakuri Reserve which is an half an hour walk that give and introduction to the limestone rock formations, caves, forest and river systems.

At Waitomo, I joined the Black Labyrinth by the Black Water Rafting Company which is an underground guided cave tubing adventure. Nothing much of the challenge as compared to the Blue Canyon that I did in Auckland, it is more leisure, less scary. We still got to climb down into the Ruakuri Cave, jumped some small waterfall, glide in the water through the glowworm studded caves, cascading underground waterfalls and finding our way out of the cave in the dark (help is to follow the glowworms).

Glowworms catch their prey by hanging web like spindles from the roof of the cave. During our trip, we really get to the strip of spindles like spider web, thin, straight, long lines. We also get to see the glowworms real close so they are really not light bulbs at the top of the cave roof. Glowworms glow to attract their preys, they evolve into files with no mouth and die within one day. Hence their sole purpose is just to reproduce. Oh, poor thing…

Our instructors are fun and crazy namely Andy and Shannon. They are fantastic guides and it is real fun to be in the group of 7, a relatively small group. If you are a bit more adventurous, you can join their Black Abyss, where you can abseils, climb up the waterfalls, climb through narrow holes and of course pay more.

Dinner was a BBQ dinner at the Curlys where we had steak, sausages, potatoes and salads. Curlys is a small café and bar and there is pool to play. Well, the guys in with the Kiwi Experience had this around the world beer challenge where they had to drink to 12 different type of beer. And boys, being young, drunk and stupid decided to get naked again. They forgot their key to the room, dash around the hostel naked and charged into our room once, lucky they get out quickly and we locked the door after that. Think the Kiwi Experience get a complain and Flea told them to stay out of the hostel if doing something stupid, rowdy again. 记得当时年级小…