Our last adventure in New Zealand before heading back to Chicago for further US travel was a visit to the Waitomo caves. We had both been looking forward to this particular trip for months–Kara especially since she has a serious love for caves, rafting, and making me do things that are scary. It was a bit rainy when we got to our destination, but we were psyched to go, and it looked like the weather was going to hold enough for us to safely do our tour.
As you can see in the pictures below, we did our tour with a group of Asian girls from many different places. They were nice and seemed like a fun group, although we didn't get to talk much because most of them didn't speak much English. It is a bit of an unfortunate regularity in the New Zealand adventure tourism industry that Asian tourists will sign up for activities they may be unprepared for (i.e. white water rafting without knowing how to swim). After confirming once then twice that our group partners could swim, our guide was eventually able to convince them to admit that only two of them could swim. I can't say we know why this happens so often, but Kara and I quickly took on unofficial babysitter assistant roles for our tour. That said, the girls did a great job, and Kara and I only had to help out once or twice.