Day 150 - Caving in Waitomo and Skydiving in Taupo

Woke up at 7 am to be picked up to do the Black Abyss caving in the Ruakuri caves. Again I was the only girl on this excursion. I went to get geared up in a 6 mil wetsuit, socks, gumboots and a hardhat complete with light. The first thing we did was learn how to abseil on dry land. I found it quite hard as I don't weigh very much and it was much harder to descend. I ended up abseiling into a 40m crevice into the cave in the dark. There was a bit at the bottom that was quite narrow but it was pretty easy to get to the bottom. I pretty much free fell as my rope kept getting stuck if I breaked because I didn't weigh as much as everyone else.

At the bottom, we had to do a flying fox zipline in the dark through the cave. Of course, mess with the small one. After I zipped though, the guy doing my safety, pulled me back up and dropped me again. The first thing I noticed was how incredible the glow worms are. The cave was pitch black but they were all over the caves glowing bright green. These larvae glow to attract flies to the sticky strings they secrete. They live for about 12 months until they turn into adult flies who have wings so small they can't fly, no mouths so they can't eat, but have genitals that are about 50% of their body weight. Their only purpose in life is to reproduce, lay eggs and die.We continued and jumped off a 4m wall into the water in innertubes. Mine was way too big so I flipped over entering the water and fell through the hole in the tube. At one place in the cave, we all had to link together and get pulled through the caves in the dark staring up at the glow worms on the cave's ceiling. It was absolutely beautiful.

On the way out we climbed up through a waterfall. Caving here was definitely a very cool experience but not as crazy as I expected. The caving I did in Thailand was much more extreme probably due to the fact there were no safety standards!

When I was time to get back on the bus, I was exhausted. On the way to Taupo I booked a 15000ft skydive for 5:15pm. It was amazing. Upon arrival, I was tandemed up to a guy from Oregon who learned how to jump in Molalla where I did my first skydive. The world is so incredibly small. Things like this make me want to continue to travel. The view of lake Taupo was amazing from the plane. This lake is the size of Singapore. The jump as before, gave me one of the most fantastic adrenaline rushes in the world!