The Prettiest Maggots I Have Ever Seen.

As the days go by I seem to be laughing more and more. Today we drove from Rotoroua to our next stop, Waitomo. We had a new bus driver who was a grumpy old man, literally. I can’t remember his name, it was a strange nickname that he was using as his real name – someone should tell him that nicknames don’t count when you make them up yourself. Anyway the grumpy old man’s bus was fairly empty (probably because he was so grumpy) so we were able to space ourselves out. Our first stop was a farm show – which I didn’t go to, but basically it was a show all about farms, which would have been interesting, if it was free. So I gave that a miss. We were there for over an hour so to kill some time the girls and I played some rugby with two boys from our group – Tom and Neil. We didn’t play “real rugby”, it was more like, “throw the ball to each other over and over again rugby”. Which, despite not having a purpose, was actually quite fun. We also played a new and improved version of “Donkey” – if you dropped the ball once you had to play with one hand, if you dropped the ball twice you had to play with one hand and one leg, if you dropped the ball three times you had to play with one hand, one leg and one eye. After that it gets quite hard to play the game so I suppose you just go out. It’s a great game. There was also a statue of a sheepdog, which I totally did not climb on top of. Who would do that? (Me).

Our next stop was some adventure centre where they had a tiny bungy jump and some high tech cycle track where your bike hangs down from a metal track and you cycle around the track 3 times, as quickly as you can. Our great driver said that he would buy anyone that made it round 3 laps in under a minute a BBQ at our next Hostel. He was so sure that nobody would be able to, but two guys got round in under a minute, one guy made it round in 59.9 seconds! There were also Emu’s at this place – actually they were Ostriches, but it’s easier to say Emu. Now these ugly birds were behind an electric fence, which would normally be quite a good idea, but because I’m special I managed to get an electric shock. It actually really hurt! I thought I had been bitten by one of the minging Emu’s!

That was our last stop of the day so we made our way to the Hostel. Sally, Jess and I all signed up for the Black Water Rafting, our great driver booked me into the later group but someone dropped out so I changed and went to the earlier group with Sally and Jess! We got dropped off at the Black Water Rafting centre – now before this trip I had never heard of Black Water Rafting, let me/the Kiwi Experience book explain. “The Black Labyrinth is the original black water rafting trip that brought the company international recognition. The three hour long trip (one hour underground) involves a combination of walking and floating on an inner tube along the river canyon, jumping off a waterfall and gliding through caverns lit up by thousands of glow-worms. Experienced guides conduct the tour with professionalism and humour, providing a unique Eel’s-eye view of Ruakuri, Waitomo’s most complex cave network.”

It was so good! Getting into the wetsuits was quite the ordeal and you had to do a practice jump off a jetty before you went into the caves. In order to get into the caves you had to climb through a tiny opening and then we sat for a bit in the first of a few caves – then we set off on our adventure. One of the first things I saw was a nice, big eel! It was pretty big, maybe the length of my arm and it swam off into one of the areas we had to float through! It was so much fun going through all the caves, I did bump my head a few times (right at the start, after she told us no to bump our heads on the stalactites, woops) and at one point my foot got stuck, which was more worrying than funny but that lasted for about 3 seconds! The waterfall jumps were pretty good, really gracefully done...Nat! I don’t think I could have looked worse if I tried; falling backwards into freezing cold cave water is not a good look for me, especially when kitted out in a sexy wetsuit and helmet!

After a while we came across the glow-worms, which are very beautiful for maggots! Imagine a triangle shaped cave. You are standing on the bottom of the triangle, looking up at the point. That’s probably the best way for me to describe this part of the cave – along the top were thousands of glow-worms, like little fairly lights all over the roof! It was really nice! You had to walk through parts of the caves and at other times we had to float along in our tiny little tubes! At one point we were all in a line, holding onto the person behinds feet, so we made a chain of people and we floated down the river, in the pitch black! At this stage we were back to singing... We sang some Oasis, some Queen, a bit of The Beatles and Bon Jovi also featured. They seem to be the classics when it comes to group sing alongs! We eventually let go of each other and went back to floating down the river on our own, well some of us did. I decided that it would be much better if I kept holding onto the chap in front of me! Poor Neil, I’m not sure how he felt about me holding onto him in a dark cave, but I felt a lot better about the whole “in a dark cave with eels” experience, knowing that I wasn’t going to be stuck somewhere on my own, in the dark eel cave. Did I mention that it was a dark eel cave?

When we had finished our Black Water Rafting/Eel Cave Experience we had to get the wetsuits off – which was super fun and then we all went for some soup and bagels, which I thought was just lovely. A really nice way to finish off a really good activity! Then we went to the Hostel. I kid you not, now I know how the Israelites felt when they got to the Promised Land. I don’t think I have seen a more beautiful place. It was a fairly new Hostel, so everything was clean and new and neat! Ellen didn’t go Black Water Rafting so she was able to book us all into a room together, which was so good! The “room” we had was more like a house! On the ground floor there were two single beds, a bathroom and a real wardrobe – like a built in one, with hangers! Then upstairs there was another two single beds! It was amazing. No top bunk! Yesh! Ellen and I took downstairs and Sally and Jess went upstairs. By the time we got back from our Eel Adventure it was almost time to go out, so we all stated getting ready. I took it upon myself to star in my own little fashion show. After showing Sally and Jess all the outfits I had I then showed Ellen all my outfits and we decided what I should wear. Ellen, like myself, is a New Look girl, which was nice because we have the same sort of taste in clothing (and men apparently)! After the classy fashion show, the not so classy fashion show began. I started prancing about in my bright green hot pants with my knee length green socks on. Then I had to do my makeup, so the old makeup pants were out and on my head. The boys were struggling to control themselves, obviously. After being idiots for a while, doing some stretching and a bit of dancing, we were ready to go to the pub. Ellen and I had ordered a big, dirty BBQ, so we got started on that (steak, pasta, potatoes, salad, bread – all the wonderful things in life) and the others came down. We actually had quite a good table, Ellen, Jess, Sally, Neil and Tom (the two English guys that were on our bus and in the caves) and then another guy called Steve. After dinner we played a few games, which I was horribly bad at. There was some clapping game where you clap your hands on the table and I just could not do it! We actually played quite a few games – I was only rubbish at half of them! By the end I was getting quite good at some of them! Then the boys played about 500 games of pool, so that was great fun! While they were all concentrating on the game, Ellen and I were having a right laugh about the boy to girl ratio in the pub – there were about 5 girls in a pub full of boys and we were hanging around all the good looking ones (we actually had a bus full of attractive men, which is always nice). We were also comparing the attractive men and their different dress senses! I must say, I do like a well dressed man! But I’m going to stop before I get too carried away, I need to keep this suitable for Esther!

When the boys were finished playing pool we all headed to our room and played cards - this seems to be a reoccurring theme, playing cards with boys at odd hours! Don’t worry, we played games like Slide and Snap – were wild! The boys were pretty wrecked so they went to bed and we stayed up for a while, laughing, probably a bit too loudly given the time of night, but it was our last night together! That brings me to my next point... Thursday was our last day together. Which I’m actually really sad about. When people say that they have met people that they will be friends with for the rest of their lives on these sorts of trips I always thought, what a loser. Nobody meets people like that on a bus trip. But I will really miss the girls! We had so much fun together! It was so nice, just being with people that you can have a laugh with and who are genuinely nice girls. It was also really nice having someone there who you can have a chat to or whatever. I really loved spending time in our wee group because we were all really different, but still quite similar – we had girlie chats about boys and we could be stupid together and we were all fond of our food, which I feel is a necessity in friendships! I really will miss everyone – we had such a good little buddy system going on! After carrying on for a bit we eventually went to sleep, in our lovely clean rooms!


xx