ANYWAY!
Starting where I left off, on Thursday, we didn't have any big day trips planned, so we just decided to hop in the car and go exploring a little bit outside of Auckland. Lauren wanted to go on this rain forest/beach walk/tour but none of us were really interested, so we decided to make our own and actually ended up following the real tour bus for a good amount of the drive. We drove back to the black sand beaches, but went to one located a couple kms before Piha beach. Lauren and I found this really cool waterfall once we got there and ventured down this rocky little path in our best hiking gear (flip flops and dresses) to get to the bottom of the waterfall. After about a 5 minute walk we reached the bottom which was a little pool of water, much smaller than I had expected after seeing the size of the waterfall and it was also FREEZING! We stayed there for a little bit, took lots of pictures, and then made our way back up to the beach. When we got back up to the road we found Emily and Becca in the car because there were bees everywhere on the way to the beach. Lauren and I decided to tough it out anyway and walked down to the beach which looked almost exactly the same as Piha (gorgeous) and had all kinds of cool shells/rocks (found some good ones for you mom and sarah :)). We left the beach and headed back into the city to try to find this little shopping part of town called Parnell. As it turns out, the (free) maps in New Zealand are absolutely horrendous and give no street or highway names, so navigating our way to Parnell turned out to be trickier than we thought. We finally got there around 5, perfect timing for all the stores to start closing which was not such a terrible feat since the stores we were able to go in didn't have much to offer. We decided to take it easy that night because we had to get up at 3:30 in the morning in order to make the drive to Rotorua for Sledging!
It is one thing to still be awake at 3:30. It is another entirely to WAKE UP at 3:30 in the morning. Terrible. The drive was supposed to take about 3.5 hours and we had to meet up with the rest of our Sydney crew in Rotorua at 8 for sledging, so we left at 4 to give ourselves enough time. Thankfully we made CDs the night before to listen to on the trip because most of the time we were driving in pitch black in the absolute middle of nowhere. Luckily and miraculously, we didn't get lost at all and managed to make it to the sledging place by 7:30, only to wait around for about 3 hours until we actually left for the trip. Sledging, for those of you who don't know (and I didn't even know until I was actually doing it) is basically white water rafting on a tobagen. In other words, absolutely terrifying. We got suited up in wet suits, booties, flippers, life jackets and helmets and were given a VERY brief briefing on what to expect once on the river. This included things like, "turn your head to the side when going over a rapid or else you will break your nose"..comforting. We get down to the river (after carrying 50 pound sledges on our HEADS) and have to climb over a railing that is probably 15 feet off the ground. Somehow all 12 of us fit on a tiny cluster of rocks and then were instructed to just jump in like it wasn't a big deal that we had absolutely no idea what we were doing and could possibly die. Before we actually started going down the river we watched two white water rafting boats come down over a 7 foot waterfall and continue on down the river, which by the way is called Kaituna..translation: EEL FOOD, great. I'm not kidding when I say this was the most intense thing I have ever/will ever do in my life! These were probably class 3 rapids and I was going down them exactly the way they warn you against going down them when you're in a boat. My experience throughout the day can be summed up through a Jerry Seinfeld skit: "There's a fish, there's a rock, don't care, don't die." At the end of the trip we were exhausted, cold, wet and glad to be alive. Our original plan was to spend the night in Rotorua with the rest of our friends and make the trip over to the Waitomo Caves with them in the morning, but we decided to do a later caving trip and drive back to Auckland that night.
We woke up (at a reasonable hour) on Saturday and got back in the car to drive another 3 hours to Waitomo to meet up with the rest of the group to go Caving. Our tour was at 2:30 and we got there a little early, met up with our friends and planned to meet up at the end of our trip and all drive back to Auckland together. Once again, we were fitted with wet suits, helmets and boots and made a short trek down to where the entrance to the cave was. The trip we signed up for was called Tumu Tumu Toobing which you may think implies that there will be tubing involved in the trip. This was partially correct, however I would say the actual time spent "tubing" was equal to about 1/20th of the time spent in the cave. Of the crazy things I did in New Zealand, the caving was defintiely my favorite. We got to see probably millions of glow worms which just look like tiny neon green dots and at one point we all turned off our head lamps and followed the glow of the glow worms through the cave. (Dad, you would have LOVED this!). Most of the time though was spent climbing over/under/through/between/on top of rocks, wading through murky, eel infested pools, and getting muddy. The tour ended around 5:30 and we took a short bus ride back to the main building. (Side note: both sledging and caving were made better by the attractiveness of our guides). We carivanned back to Auckland and got home at around 10:30 and planned for everyone to stay in our hotel room (10 people, 4 beds...tricky). Since it was our last night, we decided to go crazy and all ended up drinking WAY too much.
After WAY too little sleep, we got up at 5:30 (the time we were supposed to leave for the airport), still fairly drunk, and PACKED. Word of advice: never pack when you are a. too tired, b. too drunk, or c. a deadly combination of the two. The entire time from when we left the hotel to when we got back to Sydney we were listing off the things we had forgotten only to later find them in hidden compartment in our suitcases...never again. We had to drop off our rental car too, so Becca and I took a cab and Lauren and Emily followed in a rental car because the rental car place wasn't right at the airport. The only problem was that the cab driver had absolutely NO idea where the rental place was and drove around in circles for a good 20 minutes. Finally, we found it, dropped the car off with an empty gas tank--solid--and got to the airport with minutes to spare (oh yeah, and the cab cost NINETY dollars...yep, $90..cool). SO, we get to the airport, find Kate who tells us that our flight has been delayed until 5:30pm...a 10 hour delay. Ridiculous. Thankfully, the airline put us up in a hotel and we were able to get some MUCH needed sleep and a free lunch--bonus! Our plane finally took off around 7 and we got back to Sydney, completely exhausted around 9:30 Sunday night. The trip was overall a good one--not so much the relaxing vacation I was hoping for, but defintely worthwhile. I did SO many things that I had never done before and will never do again. I'm glad I did them though, mostly so I can brag about it to people for the rest of my life :)
