Dogs die trying to escape from hot cars...

Well Dave is fully fed and watered so i reckon i can risk making an entry. Where was i? oh yes, Rotorua.

We went on a day trip to Waitomo, which has a massive underground cave system. I thought it would be perfectly pleasant to go on a guided walk through them, or something equally unrisky, but no, David insisted that we wanted to do something called Black Water Rafting. It sounded interesting so we signed up. It wasn't until we got there that i found out it involved a 40 metre (13ish storeys) abseil into the caves! I am absolutely terrified of abseiling, I remember trying to it once with hannah's dad about two metres from the ground when i was eleven, or at least i remember totally freaking out.
However, we'd paid, so i girded myself. It was horiffic, my heart was coming out of my throat the whole way down, but i was muchly proud of myself for managing it. Was very pleased to find out Davey hated it more than i did, felt i'd got my own back a little! We wandered through the dark water caves for a few minutes and then our guide clipped us too a long zipwire and sent us careering through the cave in pitch black! Probably scarier than the abseiling actually. But fun. Then we threw ourselves off a big ledge into the water about 5 metres underneath with a rubber ring under our arses, or rather everyone else did, i wimped out as our guide warned us that we had to land with our legs up or our spine would come out the back of our necks, which may have put me off slightly...
So, once we were in the freezing water, we paddled on our arses through cathedral-high craggy caves, filled with thousands of glow worms, though we were a bit busy paddling to take any notice of it, so after we'd got a few hundred metres, we all hooked ourselves together with our feet and were dragged back the way we'd come in total silence with our headtorches off. b-e-a-youtiful. After that we climbed our way up through "The Passage of Watery Demise and Decomposing Sheep" which involved scaling though tiny holes and up massive waterfalls back to the blazing sun. Well worth the abseil i say.

Then for our last Kiwi Experience bus ride into Auckland, we were mighty glad to see the end of them!

This hostel computer won't let me allow a pop-up which is a shame as i had a stonking photo for you.

The first night in Auckland we stayed in a complete stoner's dump of a hostel, got out of there as fast as we could to a fantastic one three doors down. Been running out of NZ dollars so haven't done anything ground-breaking as far as i can remember. We had a great night yesterday, we went for a lovely Thai with Rosie and Cathy, David's aunt and her partner who live over here, you lucky buggers. this was followed by yummy ice creams, which i apparently managed to throw down my new jeans i discovered this morning. And i call Dave the mucky pup! Anyway, thanks guys!
Today, after a trip to the hospital to pick up my mail (i'm a regular there, they hold it for me) we've wandered around everywhere trying to get hold of Fijian Dollars and surrepitiously buying birthday presents when we think the other isn't watching!

Not sure when i'll next get to a computer, have no idea whether Fijian islands bother with internet access!

Ooh, two minute beep. Cheerio! xx