We started the next morning by slipping into some wet and cold wetsuits and put hard hats on before selecting our floating tyre for the day! When you are climbing into a hole in the ground that’s filled with ice cold water to float through pitch black caverns and stare at small glowing dots on the cave ceiling you’re either very very very drunk and stoned or at the Waitomo Glowworm Caves 🙂

Sadly we have no photos of this underground adventure, because we didn’t want to bring our camera on the trip and the photo CD from the tour guide would have cost a small fortune. But here’s a link for a glimpse of what The Black Labyrinth backwater rafting tour did look like.

After defrosting our frozen limbs with a nice hot soup it was time for the very last part of our road trip through New Zealand. That evening we arrived back in Auckland, where our New Zealand holiday began almost three months earlier. We spent the last three days in the land of the long white cloud fairly relaxed, trying to (unsuccessfully) sell the camping equipment we bought in New Zealand, buying snorkel gear and reef shoes for our next destinations and shrinking our luggage back to backpack size … amazing how much stuff you can collect on a three month road trip 🙂