Well, my surfing didn't get much better, so I decided to leave it until warmer climates (Oz) and head onto Waitomo Caves. These are a network of 300+ caves with lots of gloworms and cool adventure options.

I decided to leave the Stray bus behind again to do a full day adventure - in the morning I confronted my fear of heights and did a 100m absail into "the lost world" cave. This was followed by some exploring, including the obligatory gloworm viewing, and then a 30m ladder climb out of the caves. The ladder climb was actually more scary than the absail, every moment feeling your wet hands get weaker and legs more tired as you progress further form the hrad rock floor... Ok, your on a safety harness, but it still shit me up a bit.

In the afternoon I went on to do a more adrenalin packed and much wetter trip. Clad in a figure hugging wetsuit and bright red helmet, I absaild down waterfalls, crawled through water filled passages and squeezed my immense bulk through some stupidly tight passages. After over an hour of this, we then stopped following the water down, and instead follwed it up throgh some harnessed rock climbing, som e more ladders (not so big this time) and generally hoisted our way exhaustedly out of the caverns. This part of the days trip was just amazing, and they have a waterproof camera with them, so I have photos of me in the alluring getup descirbed above !