So now onto Waitomo and Shells christmas present for the two of us to go Black Water Rafting, having been told on the way that we were going to be doing first thing the next morning, Harriet was still relatively relaxed thinking that she still had the night to think about the rafting and get her head around it. HOWEVER, when we were filling in the forms signing our lives away, accepting that there was a reasonable chance that we could get hurt, they told us that we had 30 mins and then meet round the side to pick our wetsuits etc... This turned harriet into panic mode a little, while jez was trying to help her relax a little but with no sucess.

So after a short introduction and a practice abseil down a steep slop it was time to go into the cave. Harriet was the first of the two of us to go down, once she was out of sight, Jez realised that while he had been trying to help harriet that he himself really didnt enjoy abseiling (only admitting this once they were both at the bottom of the absail) however this went without a hitch even when the cave narrowed with both thinking that they could quite possibly get stuck and form as a plug stopping anyone entering or leaving the cave. Once everyone was down in the cave there was then a short walk to the zip wire, where we were all told that we had to switch off our head torches, and even when the headtoches were on there was no way of knowing that was happening at the bottom, so it was just hoping that there were no rocks on the way down to hit.

We were now in the cave for real, down a 37 meter water fall and i guess another 5 or 10 meter drop from the zip wire, so thats a long way underground if anything was to go wrong. This was when we sat on the edge of a small cliff edge type thing which was a a good 3 or 4 meters above the water, and they brought us tea and coffee, and a flap jack for a bit of warmth and energy as it was refreshing down in the cave (not cold). After the break it was then time to jump off the cliff with the rubber ring behind you to land on as it was reasonably shallow. Out of the two of us Jez jumped first and loved it, and surprisingly the rubber ring did come back up after going under. Next up was harriet. the jump led to her head going under the water and the shock that followed on her face was funny for everyone who was aready at the bottom and took a good few seconds for harriet to realise what direction the laughing was coming from. On the rubber rings we then pulled ourselves along the still water by a rope for a few hundred meters before forming a train of rubber rings and the guide pulling us slowly back so that we could see all the glow worms above (which we found out was a lie as they are not actually worms, they're maggots, and the maggots dont glow it is the crap that glows, so we basicly went down in the caves to look at illuminous crap. lol)

Having got the train back to where we started we then dumped the rubber rings and went on a walk through the caves, there was one particular stretch we were both sure we had been somewhere similar before, as it was named drunken alley, which was because the ground underneath the water was up and down and bumpy, but you couldnt see the changes so you just had to hope for the best and go slow, and as per usual Harriet managed to find herself stumbling to the ground on a number of occasions, the rest of the trip was rather uneventful, just looking at the amazing features within the cave, and even coming across an eel in a one of the crevasses to the side. The final part was just two waterfalls which we had to climb at the end that led to the end of the caves and back to the sunshine. This was free climbing up the waterfalls although they did offer us some assistance.

The following morning, after a bit of waiting we headed on to taupo but not before heading to the Zorbing centre, this was the going down a slope in an inflatable ball, with water inside. Getting into the ball together Jez was extremely close to crushing Harriet on the way down. It was then time to get out, which was probably the closing thing to knowing what it feels like to be born as you exit via a small hole with the water gushing out alongside.