Cave Time

Long Beach is about a half hour drive outside of Dunedin and right along the shoreline there are massive caves that many people who I've talked to have stayed in over night (for cave parties, camping, etc). So a few of us decided that this past weekend that we have to experience spending a night in the cave. So Laura, Dave, Mike, Julie and I packed up Friday afternoon, did a 5 minute essentials shop through New World (grocery store) for all the camping essentials and hit the road for Long Beach!

Arriving at the beach, the weather was looking kind of scary so we wasted no time in making it to the cave. We set up shop in the smaller one, climbed some rocks and all went on a hunt for fire wood. Ofcourse Dave and I had to find the biggest log on the beach and drag it all the way back to the fire pit at the cave...

There was another group of Kiwis staying on the opposite side of the cave that we were in and ended up playing a game of touch-rugby with them later that night (my first game of rugby in New Zealand!) After the game Laura, Dave and Mike all took off into the freezing cold ocean; I don't think there was any way of convincing either Julie or I to swim in that ice cold water.

We got a massive fire going and sat around conversing over how fast the semester has gone by and how little time we all have left in New Zealand. The night was full of other international students stopping by in the cave to say hi and sit by the fire (but they all decided to drive back to Dunedin that night). Some guys brought some fireworks, so we shot those off on the beach.

Breakfast of Champions!

Very shortly after the fireworks the fire ended up going out because we didn't collect enough wood earlier that day (I blame Dave). So we called it an early night and all jumped into our sleeping-bags inside the cave. It rained for the majority of the night and we didn't all get up until around 10:30am. At that time it was beautiful out (New Zealand weather is crazy).  We all had cake for breakfast packed up our stuff and went rock-climbing for the rest of the morning. None of us really had any experience asides from Dave so it wasn't very long until we were all ready to head back to the dirty Dunedin.

Laura killing it at
Rock Climbing