Ross, Luke and the OB Joneses started the day feeding the animals on the farm. It took them close to an hour! They obviously impressed our host because she later sent me a message to tell us to reduce the balance we owed her by $120 – she though the family was lovely and NZ was expensive enough! Therein lies our bargain of the day!

We headed straight for the Waitomo Caves area to the Black Water Rafting Company. I had found some great deals (for example, one teenager caving for free with a paying adult etc.) last night. Our concern was whether Sam and Cooper would be old enough and heavy enough (the minimum weight requirement is 45kg, which neither of them make, and Tim only just does!). One of the staff assessed both boys and decided an immediate no for Sam because he was “just too small”, wouldn’t fit a wetsuit and was at risk of hypothermia. The utter devastation on his face was immediate, and he held it together just long enough to return to the bus where he could cry in his seat. Cooper was borderline, so returned to the bus to sympathise with Sam.

Ross, Luke, Jarrod, Tim and Zac ended up signing up for the three hour rafting/tubing tour of the caves, and Beck and I took the others for a 45 minute glow worm caves tour (which is probably my limit underground in dark claustrophobic spaces anyway!). Luckily Beck and Abi were there to hold us all together: Jess and I with our anxieties about being underground at all, a smiling but still unwell Ollie, Belle, and two very sad and sulky boys in Coops and Sam who would rather have been tubing with the big boys!

We were able to take a boat ride and see many glowworms, and then enjoy a leisurely lunch at the cafe upstairs while we waited for the boys to return. Before heading back to our accommodation, Luke took us on yet another walk 🎉…..a half hour loop track to a natural tunnel and waterfall which their guide recommended, near Ruahaki Cave. If done at night, you can see glowworms, but we though we would try it during the day first. It was beautiful scenery, but I concussed myself on a stalagtite as I was busy focusing on my footing, and now have an egg on my head 😩

We returned to our cabins for an afternoon siesta, and met up for dinner at the HuHu cafe (unable to house us last night).

There are now cousins playing together in one cabin (supervised by Abi who is trying to finish reading Othello before school returns), while adults play cards in the other cabin (Kaboo, a game that Ross, Jarrod and Tim managed to practice a lot in Europe). Tomorrow we travel to our final destination, Auckland.