Waitomo and Hamilton

Saturday, Megs and I went to Waitomo. It is pretty much a nothing town except that
it is set on top of a ton of interconnecting caves. It is now a huge tourist attraction,
because inside the caves are glow worms. Megs and I decided to go and check it all out. We signed up for the Black Labyrinth tour. It was a 3 hour tour where we tube through the water in the caves! It was awesome! Not anything really wild, but it was a blast! We got there at 9:30 and were put on the 2:15 tour, so we had a little time to kill, so we went
to the cave museum, then to the Kiwi House, where we saw tons of cool birds and including Kiwi Birds. You can only see them now pretty much in sanctuaries. There were two of them. They are huge. I always thought they were little birds. They are so weird looking!

After that we had lunch and went to the Shearing Shed, where they shear Angora Rabbits daily and you can watch a shearing show with free admission. A women commentates the whole thing too! Hahaha. So we watched a rabbit get shorn! How random is that?!

Then it was time to go back for the cave tubing. We had to wear helmets with headlamps,
wetsuits, and boots. We went through practice safety regulations and stuff. Then we
went down into the cave. There are stalagmites and stalactites everywhere. It was really
cool. We walked through some and tubed through other parts. We also came to a part where there was a "waterfall" it was like maybe 4 feet, so we had to stand up, turn around with our tube on our butt and jump backwards down it. This is where we saw an eel. It was just a baby, they called her Lily. She is usually in the same spot under a rock I guess. Then we connected tubes with our group of 12 and our guides and turned our lamps off. Our guides pulled us through the caves in complete darkness, and when you look up you can see all these bluish green shiny dots above you. These were the glow worms. Then we disconnected our tubes, turned the headlamps off and had to find our way through the rest of the cave by using the glow worms above us as a guide. The guides said it was better to turn our lamps off not only to see the worms, but so we didn't see the other eels either. Apparently Lily's grandparents are in that part of the cave. They are over 3 feet long!!!!! AHHHH. It was so fun. Then we got hot showers afterwards, because the water was freezing, and free soup and bagels. After the caves we drove to Hamilton, a big city, and camped there for the night. We even treated ourselves to Pizza Hut!
Yesterday, we went to the Hamilton Gardens. They are huge!!!! We probably saw less than half in 2.5 hours! They were themed gardens. There was the Greek Garden, the Chinese Garden, the Parisian Garden, and the Indian Garden. They were beautiful!!! It was amazing. Check out the pics on my website!

This week I am off to camp in the wild NZ bush with my Year 7 kiddies. I can’t wait!