After my trip up to the Northland I found myself with a week to spare before I was due to be volunteering at the triathlon. Having ruled out options to travel anywhere else in that time due to cost, I settled in for a week at Fat Cats hostel. Still being used to the fast paced travel life I was a little worried I was wasting time hanging around the same area for so long. To make the best use of my time I decided to take part in a wide and wonderful variety of activities.

I signed up for a two day Zen meditation course taking place over the two Saturdays. This was really insightful, providing background on Zen and Buddhism, as well as teaching their meditation method. It was interesting to learn that health professionals viewed this as a valid tool for patients, a man with serious anxiety issues and a woman with a chronic illness both having been advised to try meditation as a coping mechanism.

I also finally managed to locate someone who was able to make me a travel hula hoop and who also held classes. I attended two classes during my remaining time in Auckland and had a great time learning a variety of new tricks, which I am now attempting to master.

During my first few days back at Fat Cats I spoke to another girl who planned to do a day adventure caving before she left New Zealand (which was to be in a few days time). Five minutes later I had signed up to join her, along with one other girl, though the only thing I had grasped about the experience at that point was that there would be some water, some caving and some glow worms.

A couple of days later we were on a 7:15am bus out of Auckland to get to Waitomo caves for 11am. Once there we were kitted out with our caving gear, wetsuits, harness, helmets, headlamps and boots. Nicely weighted down we then had a ten minute drive to the beginning of the caves, where after a 10 minute abseil practice, we were ready to make our way in.

Watching the sunrise while waiting for the bus to Waitomo

I ended up volunteering to be front of the line, to be fastened into the rope and begin the 30m sheer drop into the cave. This involved a short wide drop, followed by a wiggle through a small gap in the rock and then finished up with an expanse of cave behind me as I made the rest of the decent.

Once everyone else was down, we made our way a short way along a tunnel like section before reaching a zip line. We were then told to switch our headlamps off as we would be doing this part in the dark!

This turned out to be one of the most enjoyable moments, sailing through the air unable to see anything around except for the hundreds of tiny bright white dots of the glow worms, appearing as stars in a black and clear sky.

From here we were to make our way down a cave stream in rubber rings. Ensuring we were all hanging onto the sense of adventure, we made our entrance by jumping out holding the ring to our bottoms, splashing down into the stream hopefully still attached to the ring. I somehow ended up at the front of the queue again and jumped into what turned out to be icy cold water, chilling me to the bone despite the wetsuit layers I was wearing.

In spite of the numbing cold we enjoyed every second. Pulling ourselves along a rope attached to the cave wall, I kept my headlamp turned off as I gazed upwards at the endless twinkle of glow worms. We were then instructed to make a chain between ourselves and were slowly pulled back in the direction we had come in complete darkness, save for the glow worms. It was a wonderfully serene and slightly surreal moment.

Our final part of the caving journey took us stepping, sometimes stumbling, along the rocky floor, often knee or waist deep in water, which we later found out contained an eel or few… I had great fun floating on my stomach across the deeper pools, with the wetsuit making me so buoyant I struggled to pull my legs back under the water when I reached the other side.

The time has finally come to return to the surface (which we did in as stylishly as possible when weighed down with water filled clothing), climbing up and out over two cave waterfalls.

After drying off, being fed and watered, our only task left for the day was to make our way back to Auckland. This we planned to do by hitchhiking. With a little bit of a worrying start, barely any cars passing on the remote country road, we were eventually picked up by a couple who had also spent the afternoon caving. They could take us to Hamilton a town about halfway back, where we hoped a busy location would mean we could get the rest of the way with little trouble.

This turned out to be the case. We had barely set off down the road in Hamilton when a truck pulled over and it was to be a journey travelled in style. The back of the truck made into a makeshift bedroom, we returned to Auckland on a purple fluffy mattress, enjoying the sunset as we relaxed in our horizontal position.

Sunset view from the truck

During the rest of my free time I read books, took walks to the neighbouring town, practiced my hooping and even spent an afternoon helping our chef (a backpacker working for his food and accommodation) prepare an evening meal and a super size loaf of bread.

My last few days in Auckland were spent around the city centre as I volunteered for the triathlon. I really enjoyed watching the event come together and knowing I was a part of it. On race day I was lucky enough to see at least part of most races taking place.

Throughout all of my activities during the week I realised one really nice element of them was that they integrated me into the Auckland community. Communication with the locals obviously made easier by a common language, it is still easy to get caught up within the travel community and I’m glad this time gave me the opportunity to experience both.