Waitomo

Unfortunately we didn’t take many pictures this day 🤨 we woke up in Rotorua and checked out of our super comfy hotel there and stopped in town to do some souvenir shopping and grab a quick coffee before we hit the road to embark on our journey to Waitomo where we are booked to stay in a hotel that is haunted 👻 !!!! We also have a cave tour that includes zip lining in a cave which I have never done before and I am super stoked to do . These things are never cheap and I think I paid $205 NZD per person to try this out . While we were driving I got my navigator and part time photographer Kathleen to call Waitomo Adventures and see what time our pickup was so we can make it on time to either check in to our room or go directly to the caves . This is where things began to get .... different ? The person who answered immediately say that they have been trying to contact me for the last couple days which is totally possible but I do have a SIM card here which in some cases is useless because wifi is sketchy at best here . They said our booking has been cancelled .... now I have a car booked and driving it , a hotel booked and we as I already mentioned are on our way ! So what do I do ? The mention of us doing another tour comes up and we were asked if we would want to pay extra to do something else . Ummm , no ? Yeah we said no flat out . Then we were told there were no other options to do any zip lining and I became flustered and told Kathleen to hang up and we would talk to them when we arrive . Here is the thing , the tour needed 3 people to have it go on and we were only 2 and they offered us to pay for a 3rd person and have a private tour .... no ! We were also told that if they got a hold of us we could have done the other zip lining option at 10 am , that’s already past us and I wasn’t going to wake up at 5 am to drive there anyways so that’s another solid no . From our perspective if there is any other tours operating and they want to let us go then so be it but we are not liable to be paying more and if they want they can give us our money back which probably isn’t in their best interest on a slow day . The rest of that drive to Waitomo was pretty intense and I white knuckled it driving on the wrong side of the road and missing turns and flipping my damn windshield wiper to indicate turns and it sucked knowing and thinking my zip lining dream was now gone . 

We finally get to Waitomo which is a small town in the middle of nowhere and we make our way to the tour office which is at the wrong address listed on their website and they have moved which adds more frustration to all this scenario and I forgot to mention that Kathleen eventually did find an email in my junk email which didn’t come through earlier but was in fact sent the day before so I feel partially responsible but I swear to you and anyone reading that I check my emails religiously and even my junk folder to double check everything so it must not have come through due to dodgy capabilities in the area ... FUCK !!!! So when we finally get there we both agreed we won’t pay more and if they offer us the tour around the same time which was 3 pm and is double the cost then we would gladly take it . The woman behind the counter graciously offers us the upgrade and says there was another tour also cancelled and she tried to combine us but the other two people refused to do our tour and they opted for another tour at a similar cost earlier in the day which they wanted to try to get us onto and that did include a zip line . Oh the frustration . I wanted to scream but held my shit together and when they offered us the 4 hour Lost World tour with abseiling we took it .... right away I was emotionally distressed as I didn’t want a workout and wanted a free falling zip line flying through the air type of thing grrrrr... I also didn’t want to be in tight caves or anything of the sort and we left and went to our hotel to check in and the whole time I was bitching and moaning that we accepted this other tour and should have just got our money back to do something else but that would have been a waste of time as Waitomo is pretty much a dead end town with not much aside from drinking or adventure tours ..... off to the hotel we go !

When we got to our hotel we were greeted by a woman at the front desk and she was got us sorted and there was another couple checking in at the same time so I didn’t say much and we just went to our room and dropped our bags ... I didn’t want to drag my goalie bag to my room and went back down and asked if they had a storage and there was one right at front door and that’s when I asked if the place was haunted and she said she has never seen anything and I said oh because we heard it is .... I went to the car grabbed my stuff came back and then she opened up a bit more saying that guests that don’t know the history usually leave right away when they find out either from checking online or what she said is some guests get a bad vibe and it happens a lot ! I assured he the reason we booked this was because we wanted to experience something going on 🤔she laughed and said we might ? This place is spooky .... think of the hotel in The Shining ! That’s the decor and feel in this place . We didn’t stay long and headed back to do our adventure tour .

When we got back to the Waitomo Adventure tour office I was still absolutely reluctant to go abseiling , we met a couple there from Boston by the names of Div and Shreia (excuse my spelling if it’s wrong ) they were doing all sorts of adventure stuff and travelling with a tour jumping hostel to hostel with a tour group called Hakka Tours which is basically a backpackers easy way to travel on the cheap which I’m sure is offsetting their cost for doing all the crazy stuff they are doing which is quite smart but I’m dragging around my goalie bag and we did consider this option but I’m glad we rented a car and I got the chance to experience driving here . They have paid the full price and we told them our issue with it all but they made the trip a lot better as they were a cool couple ! Our guide was T , that was the short for her name which I’m sure none of us would remember ? She is a super fit super cool dudette that I would be happy to have my back in any scrap 🙂in other words this gal is tough as nails ! We all jumped on the bus and headed to the caves and got into our blue jumpsuits , got our safety harnesses on and checked and our helmets with head lamps and off we went into the abyss . I was nervous but didn’t want to show it and to be honest I think we all were until the point where we got to the abseil and had to lean over and sit on a pipe over hanging the cliff side .... yes it was scary but we were all safely tied in . T went over what to do and all the safety procedures and we all began to drop from the base which I’m sure was a 100 metre drop and at first it was scary but then was more fun  aside from the harness digging into my crotch which was pretty much almost painful by the end of the drop 🤕 the scenery while dropping down was ridiculous and you would swear that you would see a pterodactyl flying by if you have a vivid imagination like I do . I’ve personally never seen anything so beautiful and untouched by man .... nature at its finest , this blew me away and soon into our drop I forgot how much I didn’t want to do this and began enjoying the fact that I didn’t ask for a refund . We really did get a steal of a deal on this !!!! This is a must do on my list of things to tell you all to do if you ever visit New Zealand 🇳🇿 without a doubt . Once we dropped into the cave we were near an underground river or stream and the water was crystal clear and we were in the earths core below ground level . It is hot in New Zealand as it’s summer but even wearing these blue jumpsuits down here in the cavern it’s really nice and cool . How refreshing ....ahhhh . Climbed over and under rocks navigated through the cavern with safety ropes to guide us most of the way and there wasn’t a moment that I felt unsafe at all and even our guide T was there every moment of the way making sure we were ok . We made it to a heavy flowing portion of the water way where you could barely hear anything and we turned off all of our head lamps and saw the glow worms hanging from the ceiling of the caverns .... it was like laying back and staring at the stars while we were given water and chocolate to keep our energy up . This was no walk in the park and I was sweating pretty hard by the end of it . Our trail ended at a ladder which they call the stairway to heaven which goes straight up and is probably 100 metres ! With harness on we all climbed up and I apparently made it up faster then the others to the amazement of our guide who obviously can tell I’m the biggest in the group lol ... at the top we climbed out of a hole in the middle of a farmers field which is in some bushes and made our way back to the base camp to get our belongings and get out of all this safety gear . We are all glowing with happiness . Oh I almost forgot to tell you about the glow worms .... remember my post the other day where I told you all I booed a guy and called him a wanker for flashing his camera at the glow worms ? They told us at that Maori village that the flash will kill the glow worms ... apparently that’s bullshit ! Our guide today who is also of Maori descent said that they actually just burrow back into their holes and don’t come out for a bit so what I’m thinking is they said that as to not ruin part of their show for the next group of tourists coming through and it’s probably an easier and better way to keep us from flashing lights at them .... anything to keep that flow of dollars coming in eh 🤭

Smiles on faces we went back to our haunted hotel . It still feels creepy ... but it’s not dark yet and we gotta get some grub so we went to a place recommended to us called Hu Hu and it was packed ! We got a table in a corner without any view of anything at all because people make reservations even for this restaurant in this dead end town . I finally got my hands on a decent pint of IPA and ordered a steak .... gotta try this NZ beef YUM 😋. The food was excellent and I had myself a second pint to get a nice buzz then we headed to a pub called Tomo on the way back to the hotel and bumped into our friends that we just did the tour with and had a couple pints and they were with their group that were travelling all together and it was mentioned that we were staying at the haunted hotel . Now even their tour guide mentioned that he has never been in there and it spooked him out a bit as there were even noises that were heard from the lodging they were staying at down the hill and he even said that the guides room sometimes is not a comfortable place to sleep because of the noises ... they asked if we could show them around the hotel so we did . I showed them our creepy little room and told them down the hall is where all the reported activity is and if you follow this link you can read about it ( https://hauntedauckland.com/site/waitomo-caves-hotel-2/ ) 12A is actually room 13 which is about 20 feet from our room and if you continue down the hall the room the staff don’t even want to go near is which is room 25 . Read the link I posted and you will know more ! I took the fellas by them but we didn’t experience or hear anything but they all had this look of bewilderment on their faces 🥶 . 

When the guys left we called it a night and I fell asleep with the tv on and Kathleen stayed up later ... let’s just say that both of us didn’t sleep well . My night was filled with scary nightmares . You’re wondering if this place is really haunted ? I would say it is but based on evidence of what we experienced I can say this is inconclusive and let’s just say we survived the night 😬