300-foot drop into a CAVE!!!

Yesterday we abseiled (rappelled) off a platform suspended 300 feet off of the floor of a gigantic cave system. WOW. After harnessing up and donning 5 millimeter wetsuits for the 50 degree water, we trekked through the 3rd-wettest spot in New Zealand to the Waitomo caves. The abseil was incredible. We were suspended freely in the chasm - with no wall to push off we simply pulled ropes through our own personall rigging for the 100 meter descent. Once in, we began a 6-hour climb through a massive limestone cave system with huge stalagtites and stalagmites. The whole system was cut through the karst by a freshwater stream which we walked, waded and even had to swim through. We dropped from holes in the rock into the river and even pulled off a 25-foot free jump off an underground waterfall. We paused midway through for hot tea and chocolate and then proceeded to kill our headlamps, at which point we were greated by thousands of glowworms, which made the ceiling appear as if stars were somehow poking through the rock. The glowworms were incredible - really some of the strangest adn most beautiful (at leazt from a distance) creatures you could even behold. They secrete enzymes in their digestion process that glow, and the glow attracts their food, which is primarily small insects that get swept into the cave system. It was unbelievalb e - in the darkness you could see thousands of them suspended like pin-point lights on the cave ceiling! Tomorrow we're off to the Tongariro crossing - an active volcanic landscape used extensively the Lor do f the Rings filming. The weather has been described to us as "All four seasons in 15 minutes" Should be an incteresting 8-hour trek!