Waitomo

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Trip Start Jun 13, 2006 Previous
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  Waitomo, New Zealand
Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Alex: We traveled to Waitomo with Sally and Trish who we met while diving and we all ended up in the same group to go caving too, which was great. We went with Rap, Raft and Rock, so called because you rappel (abseil) into the cave, then do some black water rafting before rock-climbing back out.

We all got kitted out in wetsuits, dodgy pants, wellies and helmets, which made us look like a highly attractive cross between Bob the Builder and Thunderbirds...hmm When we got to the abseil though I soon forgot about the outfit, concentrating too much on the 27m drop before me. Dean went before me, and I surprisingly found swinging out over the crevasse quite easy and once I got into it I really enjoyed the abseil, the only thing I disliked was being stopped half way down while our guide yelled down to Dean to move out of the way, it was his own fault, he had sent us down and not told us where to go

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! When I got to the bottom no-one was around so I walked to the entrance of the cave where I saw Dean's helmet light so I followed him, Trish and Sally in. I soon found them about 20 meters into the cave. When the guide got down we got a telling off for going into the cave on our own, he had told Sally to wait by the bench, which was actually a rock ledge and hadn't told anyone else what to do, oops. We then got out of our abseiling gear and were handed a rubber ring - time to go into the cave for real this time. We tramped further into the cave through cold water, sometimes waist deep and then stopped, turned off our lights and looked up - wow. Above us were thousands of glow worms letting off their blue green light and looking remarkably like stars. Together the glow worms give off a lot of light, the cave should have been pitch black but you could just about make out the people around you, pretty impressive. It was now time for our first taste of black water rafting as we plonked ourselves in our rubber rings and sedately drifted downstream to the cave entrance watching glow worms as we passed, very sedate, not the scary extreme sport it sounds. We headed into another cave, part of the same complex and rafted into the cave, thousands more glow worms and a fresh water eel. After a mixture of tramping through water and rafting we reached a spot with a few narrow passages so we could get a taste of caving. Had you wanted to you could have avoided all of the narrow bits but it was fun to try and everyone managed to get through them all. We then sat in the pitch black (no glow worms here) and ate chocolate and had a hot drink - how civilised. We then headed back to the cave entrance, nearly time to go home and only one obstacle left - getting back up the 27m cliff we came down. Back on with the harnesses and up that rock face. It was an easy climb but for inexperience folks like us that is enough. Once at the top it was time for a hot shower to thaw out our feet before heading off to Rotorua. All in all it was a really good trip, great fun and I got to try out loads of things I hadn't done before and look ridiculous while doing them - what more can you ask for?

Dean:  Really good fun.  We will definitely be searching out some more sites for climbing and abseiling while we are here in New Zealand.  As for the photos, we have some on a CD ROM but need to convert them into a more manage size before we can upload them.  Only then will you all get see our sexy outfits...

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