You're eating maggots Michael

I'm safe in New Zealand. The plane ride and car pickup was painless, except I stayed in the airport for two hours before the rental company would come get me. It was a little after 6am when I cleared customs, and picking up the car before 8am would've cost an extra $75. Tony picked me up at 8:10 and I was on my way by 8:45.
Fortunately the car is an automatic. It was a little strange driving from the right side but I adjusted quickly. I've only almost caused two accidents and have driven on the wrong (right) side of the road only twice (only for a short period of time). Luckily most of my driving has been in the country side with very few cars. It doesn't seem like many kiwis lay on their horn like Americans do. I may be unwillingly testing this theory again soon.
My first day here, it rained in Auckland and most of my drive down to Wharepapa South. I checked in to the bunk house at Bryce';s and had the place all to myself. Two other American couples were there - Ron, Ginger, Marc, and Kate - and Ron's friend Daan. Since it was kind of raining around the area I decided to go to Waitomo to the glow worm caves. If I had to describe it in one word: cold.
I was tired and felt like I was on the verge of a cold. I made the twewnty minute drive there, squeezed in to an already wet wetsuit, and slapped a helmet with a head land lamp on. There were ten of us in the group. I was the first to jump in to the water. After that I wasn't so sure I could handle it.
We walked to the entrance of the cave, went in , and regrouped. They sent the American in first. I turned on the headlamp and went in. Stalactites were hanging down from the ceiling and the ankle deep water ws rushing ahead of me. Even though I could see my own breath, five minutes in to the trip I forgot about how cold it was. I rushed through the labrynth to the jump in point, turned around, stuck my butt through the inner tube and jumped in. We floated then walked to another stopping point and turned off the headlamps. The glow worms were twinkling like stars. Here we learned some facts about the glow worms: they are actually maggots and the glow is phosphorescent shit that NASA is studying.
We floated some more in the dark, jumped down about a one meter drop into water (FUN!) and looked up to see a skylight over sixty meters above us. We were kinda deep inside this cave. We floated along some more in total darkness, at one point the water level was about nine meters deep. By the end I had forgotten about the cold, or was so numb it didn't matter. We got out of the cave and floated along the river back to the starting point.
I took a hot shower, ate some soup, and talked to some of the people on the trip. I drove back to Bryce's and crashed shortly afterwards. It was a long first day.