Sorry about not having a blog posted last night, when I got home, almost as soon as I lay down, I fell asleep. I'll fill you in on 'Haggas Honking Holes' glow worm adventure we did!

The day started like any other boring, miserable day. It was a bit foggy, and lightly raining. After we had breakfast, we watched the movie 'Juno' while we were at 'Juno Hall'. Hilarious, right? After that was done, we still had a few hours until we had to go to the 'Waitomo Adventure Centre', so we lay around the lounge room reading books, and magazines. At about 1pm, we decided it would be time for lunch, so we bought some 'Fantastic' noodles from reception and made those up. I don't think I've ever had worse noodles. They were just foul. Every bite was getting worse, and worse. Until I couldn't take it anymore. I went and poured all the flavouring down the sink, and discovered there was just under half the noodles still remaining. THAT'S how bad they were! At least the cookie I bought was amazing, so it sort of made up for the noodles. Just a little.

It was then time to pack what we needed, which were swimmers, a towel, shampoo & conditioner and body/face wash. And we were on our way! Well, to the centre anyway. It was a very quick walk, as it was practically next door. We checked in, and filled out the medical forms then had 25mins to wait until we could actually leave! We sat in the beautiful sun, and just talked. I think the quote of the day has to go to Kristy, when she said 'I hope I'm in front of you down in the caves, so if I pee, it goes all over you. If you feel something warm, you'll know what it is' Why thanks buddy! Haha, I'm very happy to announce that DIDN'T happen! And I was in front of her most of the way. Finally, 2.30pm came around, and our two tour guides came along and loaded everyone in the bus. There were 7 people doing the caves. It was about a 20min drive to the caves, and one of the tour guides, Tulli (I think that was his name) gave us a guided tour of Waitomo. Apparently there are a total of 48 people that live in this town, and the pub has 11 beers on tap. They just got traffic lights 'installed', which are just the temporary ones they sometimes have when a lane is cut off, and there's also a round-about. He was quite a character.

When we got to the farm the caves were on, he told us that the lucky farmer who owns the land, also owns what is underneath. Haggas is the family name of the lady who has SEVEN glow worm caves underneath her property! So companies lease out the caves, and she is apparently now retired.

We got given our wetsuits and had to go and change. They were a b****** to get on! When I finally got it on, we were also given our jackets, boots, harnesses and helmets. Then we were given a crash course in abseiling. Surprisingly, I didn't do too badly. After that, down the hill it was to the entrance of the glow worm cave! It was a struggle to get down, and after we did, we had to abseil about 50m to get to the bottom of the cave. It was actually really fun! By this stage, we were all still dry.

We walked down a little bit, admiring the awesome rock formations, and got the second 'fun' part of the adventure. We had to abseil again, but this time, down a waterfall! Before we went, the other tour guide, Dean, gave us a quick going-over on what was about to happen. This is how it went:
"When you get down the bottom of the waterfall, you will be waist high in water. There's not much space down there, so follow the water. You will look around, see where the water is flowing, you will look around again, yell 'Down there?' where we will yell back 'Yes' then you will look around AGAIN and yell 'Are you sure' where we will then yell back, 'Yes!!!' And then hopefully you will hold your breath and go down that little hole"

Well, he wasn't lying. At all. That's almost exactly what I did! I was quite disorientated when I got down there, and lucky for me, the guy in front of me was still down there, and he helped me down, as I was petrified!

When we got through that tiny hole full of water, we were on top of a clearing which we needed to abseil down again. Tulli was down there waiting to strap us up and send us down that wall. When I was ready to go and jumped off, I hear 'NOOO!!! NOT YET' where I swear, I almost had a heart attack! After I got down safely, I realised it was a joke when I heard him giggling to himself! I must admit, it was actually a little funny.

We crawled on our hands and knees quite a lot through the cave, which gave my hands calluses and cuts and my legs and knees are insanely bruised, swollen, and sore. It was really quite fun, we were the only two Aussies on the trip, and the Kiwis LOVED to make fun of us! But we didn't mind, we gave it back as well!

We got to a clearing in the cave where we turned all our lights out, and the wall lit up with glow worms! It was then we found out that the glowing part, was actually maggot poo! Yeah, gross right? Glow worms are what they called it for marketing lol.

So we continued through the cave, and what goes down, must go up. So we start making the journey back up. It was the worst part. We had to climb rocks, A LOT, and there were some holes that I could barely fit through. Anyone that was a bit large, wouldn't be able to get through at all.

After I finally got out of the caves, it was pitch black outside. We had to trek up a steep hill to get to the showers, and I think that was the hardest part of all. All the stairs, and my boots were FULL of water, as well as having a soaking wet wetsuit.

The overall experience was amazing, and I'm really glad I got to experience it. I would recommend it to everyone to do, but make sure you are fit and have a lot of energy! I don't know if I could do it again, but I'd try!

After the shower, and everything, we got back on the bus, everyone was b*****ed, and it felt like I had to throw up. The trip had taken everything from me. We got back to Waitomo and decided we did not want noodles for dinner, after that awful experience for lunch, so the ticket guy said he would take us into town to get a pizza! He even called the place with the work phone so we could order one. We got to the place, and his pizza was ready, but ours wasn't even in the oven yet. He was going to wait for us, which was so lovely, but we couldn't keep him waiting while his pizza went cold, and we actually ran into Ajah at the counter! So we decided to eat in, and hung out with her and another girl called Nicki. It was quite fun.

When it was time to go, we got a hot chocolate to keep us warm on the 20min walk home in the freezing cold. Then we got back to the room, where we changed into our pj's and hit the bed. We were definitely going to sleep well that night!