Day 4: Halloween. And we looked like we were in full costume as we got ready to go Black-water rafting. We put on these thick wetsuits with miner helmets (the kind with the light on the forehead). After that we hardly noticed the pouring rain. Black-water rafting is rafting on an underground river through a cave in the darkness. The "raft" is actually an inner tube that you sit on as you float down the water. Except for the part where we had to jump off a 15 foot waterfall in the dark, the water was quite calm. Blue glow-worms sparkled like stars on the cave ceiling. That night on the road, Raj began his systematic destruction of the rental car by taking a pothole field at 100 kph, and later driving over a small boulder. After that, the muffler kept getting louder.

As we drove through the New Zealand countryside, we stopped and explored many areas.

Raj crossing a free-swinging tension bridge.

Somehow, this old truck landed in the middle of nowhere, with no roads in sight. Kind of breaks up the monotony of all that beauty around all the time.