NZ Day 3 – Campervan to Lost World

Image by Ginger DJ via Flickr

Jetlag strikes back with a vengeance waking us up at 3am and our bodies refused to sleep again. With a couple of weeks without TV we took advantage of the hotel’s facilities and watched the morning programmes. There’s a right character who presents their GMTV equivalent whinging at every opportunity amusing us.

The taxi driver for our trip to collect the van was very helpful lending his mobilephone to speed up the Maui van hire process. Lucky really as it took ages setting off a little later than hoped after 1001 instructions on how to use the campervan.

The traffic to the main motorway was quite busy by NZ standards but after a few kilometres out of Auckland only a handful of vehicles were sharing our journey. One story suburbs dwindled away for lush green countryside dominated by hills, sheep and cows.

We were lucky to arrive on time at Waitomo Caves after stopping for some food and booked into the campsite opposite the meeting point. There was only us two for the Lost World tour and our two caving guides drove us for 20 minutes to some remote farmland for the trip. Dressed in a ice blue boiler suit, mining helmet, white wellies and a harness we were ready for our 4 hour caving and 100 metre abseil adventure. The decent was amazing through mists looking at small stream at the bottom and moss covered cave walls. Kerry did well after the scary platform but thoroughly enjoyed the abseil. The rest of the experience was exploring the caves seeing glow-worms, learning about caves, stalactites and ending it with a 30 metre high ladder. For the claustrophobics, there were no tight spots to worry about.

Shame the evening didn’t go as well as I bought the wrong sausages. Kiwi sausages are mainly beef or beef flavoured not pork. It was also quite chilly in the van at night.