The Lost World

We had breakfast in Huhu ( that's rumour in finnish, I'm slowly starting to believe that Maori originally came from Finland ) and after that headed to Waitomo Caves with Waitomo Advetures. Perfect timing again, we got to keep to guide just to ourselves. When we arrived we had to dress up in blue overalls, orange helmets, harnesses and über-hip gum boots. Sexyyyy! First we went through a small practice round to get used to the equipment. At the end of it we took turns standing our backs against 80m gorge, leaning back supported by our harnesses & two ropes. It took awhile to collect the courage to trust the harness & let go of the ropes, but we both did great And even tried to squeeze a little (fake) smile to the camera... After the practise we headed for the real thing! Our quide took us to this small metal platform, from which you could see through all the way down - and that was 100 meters, mind you. Guide told us that one guy had tried a bungy jump from that platform while filming a stunt scene for the tv series Xena. He had to have quite a short rope since the cave gets too narrow at some point and you really can't jump all the way down. So the bloke gave it a go with his tiny rope and went down just fine but - bang! on his way up again smashed against the platform Poor guy, that must've hurt. Well we were not going to jump anyway. There was a metallic railing half a meter away from that platform and the first we had to go and sit on that thingy! That was by far the worst part of it all, sitting on this narrow railing and you could see 100m drop under your feet... the thing being we are both more or less afraid of hights But there we sat and then it was time to just slide of from the railing and lift feet from the platform and trust the harness and the rope. The guide was in the middle rope and we we're both attached to him, just in case... Then we started our long descent down. After we got under the platform, we gathered the courage to glance down and it was just magnificent. We were like human spiders - or Spider-Pigs The rope below was so heavy that you could hardly lift it, even though it wasn't attached to anything at the bottom. It took as 20 minutes to go slowly down at the bottom of the cave. After that we went to explore the caves and saw billions of glow worms - or cannibalistic-shagging-bastards-of-glowing-shit as our guide put it They're beautiful in the dark but he really knew their true essence. After wondering around the caves we had to go back up, and that was the tricky part indeed. In the darkness there was 30m high wet and muddy ladder that we had to climb up! 10 first meters went just fine, then you started to get really really tired. Couldn't stop since hanging up there would just wear you out even more. Then start thinking how much further you really had to keep going, panicking a bit because couldn't see the end of it. But finally we both made it up back into the civilization. Wonderfull experience in all, would do it again anytime

From the caves we decided to go for a little drive to check out some natural wonders near by. First we went to Piripiri Cave ( yep, you got the name right! ) and from there we drove to Marakopa falls and Mangapohue natural arch. All amazing places. When we were driving back we noticed that the gas was running out - and we we're in the middle of nowhere, at least 30km to Waitomo and nothing before that. It was a painfully slow drive, both sure that the car would stop going in any minute! Fortunately we made it back to Waitomo, but the relief was temporary. Soon we learned that the nearest service station was in the next town, 20 minutes drive from where we were! We really had no choise so off we went, heading towards Te Kuiti and hoping we would get there... and we made it Back in Waitomo we had excellent and well deserved pizza's in Morepork ( which is also a NZ owl ). From Morepork we drove to Ruakuri Scenic Reserve and did 40 minutes walk in the darkness of the night. We only had couple of torches and wondered along a path through the woods and caves. We also saw CSBOGS again.