Kiwi Day 2 - Hot Water Beach to Waitomo / 27.01.2019

We had an early start today - 7:30 am was the time to get back on the bus. But I heard that some people even got up at 4 am for the sunrise because there was low tide, so it was perfect to chill in the hot pools at the beach while the day begins. Maybe I should have done that too - but I was already tired enough.

Then we headed to Waitomo, this place is particularly famous for its Glowworm Caves, where we would go black water rafting this afternoon, which we were all really excited about. The drive wasn't particularly spectacular, except that I felt a bit sick in the first part because of the curvy road between the trees, we saw a lot of cows (I thought there would be more sheep?) and we eventually made a stop for a little walk in Karangahake. There, Greg, our bus driver, let us out and told us that we should always stay together, otherwise we would get lost forever.

It became clearer to us as we walked why, because even though the path started with a cool swinging but not dangerous bridge over a river similar to Corsica, we could eventually discover old rails in the grass, which later led to a pretty impressive tunnel system. The path also went through the main tunnel, where it was sometimes pitch dark and smaller tunnels branched off to the right and left, luckily none of us got lost there.

There were also occasional views of the rocky river, dense bushes, and beautiful orange flowers growing along the way.

After about a good half an hour, the circular path led us back to the same suspension bridge where the bus was, and we rested for a while on the grass there, took off our sweaters as it was getting warmer, and at shortly after 11 we all got back on the bus.

After some organizational clipboards were passed around and I booked Hobbiton and a Maori adventure for tomorrow, we stopped at a (thankfully cheap) supermarket in a small town called Paeroa. Iris, Talea, Lukas and I had decided to cook something together tonight, so we bought pasta, sauce, and various vegetables. In Paeroa, the first New Zealand soft drink was also made, because carbon dioxide was discovered in the water here - a sweet lemonade called L&P (Lemon & Paeroa), which can only be bought in New Zealand so far, there are several large statues of it in the city, and of course we had to try it. It tasted like an extra sugary Sprite mix, but it was actually really delicious.

We were then only half an hour away from the Black Water Rafting check-in building, and when we arrived there, everyone paid, and then we continued to the hostel, from where we would be picked up in smaller groups later.

At 4:15 pm, our group gathered, I was with Talea, Lukas, a few other nice people, and the whole English gang. And when I say English gang, I mean all the idiotic loud people that seem to be everywhere, and who are the reason why I realize how much some fucking people can annoy me. But okay, I would survive.

We were transported in a small bus that took us to the caving building, where we had to register already today - there we were quickly assigned mega fat wetsuits, jackets, and cool white alien apocalypse rubber boots, and squeezed into the still wet clothes. Afterwards, we felt really weird because of the restricted freedom of movement and the tight helmet gave me quick headaches.

Nevertheless, we were all ready and after our two guides gave us some instructions, we took another bus to the caves and on the way there, the dumbest English guy told a surprisingly good joke: 'I'm on a seafood diet - whenever I see food, I eat it', I couldn't help but smile, even though he usually just irritated me with his loud need for attention.

When we arrived at our first stop - not yet at the caves, but for a little test run - everyone got a black rubber tire and we practiced an important formation so that we wouldn't get lost in the darkness of the caves later. To do this, we placed our tires in a line on the gravel floor, sat inside them, and held onto the legs of the person behind us. Our guides called this position 'The Snake', but the English guys found 'Tampon String' much funnier, so some stupid (but admittedly quite funny) jokes arose.

Afterwards, each of us made a test jump into a small calm river, for that we turned around, held the tire behind our buttocks, and then jumped backwards into the icy water - that's how we would do it later in the actual caves.

We were then transported to the Ruakuri Caves and it was time to enter the dark water, we all turned on our headlamps and climbed through a narrow entrance in the forest. From here, we went over rocks, under water dripping from the ceilings, through narrow stone tunnels where you couldn't even kneel, and later we jumped down a waterfall which we then climbed back up. In between, we saw the first few scattered glowworms and we were told the truth about them: the little blue light spots, which looked almost like stars, were actually fly larvae poop, which developed on the ceilings and attracted their prey to then drill into their heads with their tongues and finally suck out their insides. When they were fully developed, they were the most useless creatures ever - they were made up of 95% reproductive organs, couldn't eat, and would mate for 24-48 hours straight, after which the male would immediately drop dead and the female would only have time to lay new eggs on the ceiling. In addition, the first-borns would eat all their larval siblings. Very romantic indeed.

But when we did the tampon string after the waterfall, there were so many glowworms above us and we turned off all our lights and just floated along the calm water, which was so cozy because we could stretch out our feet and lean back on the front tire. At some point, the guys started performing medieval singing and one of them even had a really good voice. Everything echoed off the high walls and the atmosphere became really mystical.

Later they started singing Can't Help Falling in Love, and it was pretty cool that guys like them were singing such songs.

However, eventually our relaxed floating came to an end and I was almost sad because it had been so beautiful (except for my freezing hands). But we still had a smaller cave walk ahead of us until we reached the exit, we took a group photo and then drove back to the starting point, where we all took off the thick tight wetsuits. However, the chief English idiot had peed in his wetsuit and it stank really bad when he took it off and wanted to wash it in the tub like a normal person. The guy had already been really disgusting and was always burping in the bus and everywhere.

When the commotion about it was finally somewhat over (except that the next day everyone knew about the Kiwi bus and made jokes because the English guys secretly annoyed everyone), we all enjoyed a hot shower and there was tomato soup (which made me really happy) and bagels - with an instruction manual with pictures for dummies: 1. Take Bagel, 2. Cut, 3. Toast and 4. Butter. We all found that pretty funny, but when we saw the absolutely low-quality, blurry, and just untalented photos of our tour that they wanted to sell us for $35, we couldn't laugh anymore. In comparison, the photos of the group before us looked like professional work and we wondered why we got the shitty cheap underwater camera - so there were apparently no souvenir photos of this already pretty awesome cave adventure.

When we arrived at the hostel - the Kiwi Paka - I chilled with Iris in our double room again (yes, a double room!!! With peace in it!!!), we talked a bit about our tours because she had done one before me - the one with the good photos - and around 8:30 pm we met up with Talea and Lukas in the kitchen to cook pasta together with a healthy sauce consisting of tomato sauce, tomatoes, mushrooms, and carrots.

The chopping went quite well (I chopped the mushrooms extra small so that maybe I wouldn't have to taste them so much, and I suspiciously eyed Iris' big tomato chunks in between), but when we wanted to boil water for the pasta, it took about an hour because of the fucking stove, and when we finally finished, we were slightly annoyed - but at least it tasted good.

Later in bed, I planned the next few weeks a bit, took a shower, and unfortunately fell asleep quite late.

Song of the day: Can't Help Falling in Love by Elvis Presley, because of the cave singing.