Who ever hasn't woken up to air-raid sirens should really try it, especially when sleeping in a campervan at 5am in a different country, it really adds to the experience. Yes, Micah and I woke up to what we thought were air-raid sirens our last morning in Raglan, turns out it was just the fire department calling it's local volunteers. Scary none the less.
We headed down to Waitomo Caves where we had a jump on the trampoline and a quick sleep before waking up to go "black water rafting." No, that doesn't mean rafting down sewer water, it's waaaaay better than that. We went caving, in the pitch dark, freezing caves of Waitomo. We had to dress in really sexy, not smelly at all wetsuits (actually, it smelled like, well, when you pee in you wetsuit), and helmets equipped with spelunking lights, which Micah and I wear at home on a regular basis, so we fit right in. We hiked down into an underground cave with stalagtites hanging from the ceiling. We had inner-tubes with us so when we got to the deeper water parts of the cave, we hopped in them, by being forced to jump off waterfalls, backwards, into who knows where, and looked up at the pitch black ceiling. But wait, what are those stars doing in the cave? Oh, those are glo-worms? WHOA! It looked as if we were staring up at the Milky Way as we floated through the cave waters. We couldn't feel our hands or feet and our lips were purple but we didn't care, it was so incerdible to see these glo-worms shining.
After we were treated for hypothermia (I joke, I joke), we headed off to Rotorua, first stop, thermal pools. It felt so nice to thaw our icicle bodies in these naturally hot pools. The only bad thing was that the whole city smelled like rotten eggs due to all of the thermal activity.
The next day we were all warmed up and ready to go . . . . street louging, yeah that's right. We rode a gondola way up atop a mountain and then louged down it. First run went well, second run, uhhhh, not so much. I (meaning, me, as in Brooke) was feeling a little too comfortable and sped past two kids, Micah, and then the turn got the best of me. Yes, I munched it, ran into the railing, stopping myslef from flying over the edge down a realy steep hill by using my ankle as a brake . . . not a great idea. I threw myslef back on the louge like any louge champ would do and proceeded to the finish line, only to have Micah laugh at me as he sped by me, not knowing I nearly lost my life just moments before. Once we got to the finish line he saw my tears and felt bad for speeding by me and taking the win. I have fully recovered and I am ready for more.
Oh yeah, and we went to a wildlife preserve where we pet lion cubs, fed wallabies, llamas and emus (the emu tried to bite Micah's hand off but was luckily unsuccessful).
Cheers!
