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Published: July 10th 2006
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today Me and Lucy went to the Black Water Rafting Co and did one of their caving adventures called "Black Aybss"
It began at 11am with us meeting at the head quaters. We met our guides Zane and Wendy and they took us down to get our wetsuits and other clothing on. (I put my wetsuit on inside out first...duh!!) then we all clambered into the back of a van where they drove to where the cave was situated. We went through how to abseil using some rope tided to a log, down a hill. After doing this a couple of times i felt a bit better at having to do the abseil.
The abseil was down a 35 metre hole and it started with you just dangling in the air for a while controlling your desent into the darkness below. After coming to a small hole where the walls got very very close (I though i was going to get stuck) it opened up and you were able to put your feet against the wall and help control your desent a bit better. I was third from last to do the abseil out of a group of 8
and very scared.
After everyone was down in the cave we walked on for a while looking and learning about the rocks. then we came to a ledge, that one by one we had to be strapped into a harness and swing down another 25 metres into more darkness but with glowworms above you. At the bottom where everyone got off we had tea and some flap jack type thingy with our legs dangling above a river of black water.
After we had finished the tea we each had to choose a rubber ring and walk to the edge above the water, then one by one jump in with your legs out in front of you so you would stay on your ring. Lucy went first and fell out of her ring when she hit the water.....i could only laugh......i was next and able to stay in my ring even though the water was like a ton of ice hitting you. After everyone was in we floated along in one direction holding onto some rope to pull ourself along . when we got to the end of the cave we each had to turn around and put our legs up onto the ring of the person infront of us and hold onto the person behinds feet. we had to turn off all our lights and floated back to where we had jumped in looking up at the hundreds of glowworms above our heads, it was brilliant...
When we got back to the section we jumped in in, we had to stand up and walk in the other direction towards the sound of fast running water. We walked through different depths of water over small drops where the water got faster. at some points we were able to float on our backs (We had left the rings behind when we got to where we jumped in with them) After a while of walking/swimming/floating we had to crawl through a small hole to carry on. we stopped when everyone had got through and had some chocolate and hot juice of some kind. After this short break we carryed on walking until we came to a water fall. we had to climb under a small gap between the rocks to get to it, then we had to wait in turn to climb it. I was first to go and had to climb in vertically to begin with, and then doing each side slowly until i was at the top. I had to wait here for everyone else to climb up before we continued along to the next and last water fall. I went up second this time and it was slightly harder and there were two points where it dropped and then went up again. when at the top i had to walk along this tunnel until i could see light on my left the go towards it and out into freedom.
After we drove back we each had to have a nice warm shower and dry our selfs off before going up and having hot soup and a bagel each, mmmmh it was soo nice after all of what we had done. Me and Lucy decided to buy a t-shirt each and have decided to drive to Rotorua, where we will zorb among other things....but thats a different story for a different time...
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