New Zealand Friday!

We booked a Waitomo cave adventure with Cave World. We got $40 off with a code—maybe we should have looked for promotional specials for all the things we did! Oh well.  Anyway we are on the right there in our group photo. It was a diverse group of people from different countries and 4 retired people from the US who were very game.

We had a short trek over the caves first.

Then down steps into the beginning of a long cave that gradually got watery and then deep water and has 2 waterfalls in it. We started with a lesson in glow worms. These are there invisible webs lit by flash.

This is a formation that is apparently shaped like a foot and a whistle.

In the water we were linked into a floating train, going backwards, and when the camera wasn't flashing at us we were floating in complete darkness lit only by the glow worms on the cave roof.

This is an action shot of someone jumping backwards off a waterfall and landing on their ring. Pretty scary but you don't want to hold people up so you just do it.

The next scary bit is this slide, which is forwards, but much worse.

Then you just swim/float your way out, climb up a lot of stairs, ride back to the change rooms and have a shower.

We had lunch at a cafe which was one of our fancy meals. Crispy veal and prawn sliders and also a salad.

Then we headed on up to Hamilton and met up with the Lilleys who moved over from Maroubra last year. This is Isaac their big fat 3 month old.

They took us to a local berry farm where you get fresh mixed berry ice cream, and it was very good. Would not feed to dog. Would have a second one but they closed.

Then we went for dinner at a Turkish restaurant. It was an encouraging catchup.

We left at 7 and drove to Aukland to our last bnb, which was empty, we had the house to ourselves. It was good to have space to exercise and not disturb anyone, but there was no fresh milk and that sort of thing, and E couldn't resist culling expired sauces and organising the fridge. We did get a good review about our cleanliness. A good place to go with a family if you have time to do your own shopping and cooking, but a bit lifeless for us for one night.

Slept well though.