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Safely back in Wellington.
Got in about 3 hours ago. I should be in bed, but Sara had an unopened bottle of wine leftover from last week and, it being too cheap and nasty for her tastes, I offered to finish it. I then attempted to use my 120 minute calling card to call home. It took 96 of the minutes away just to get a "call not permitted" message when I finally reached the point where I dial my house...therefore I can't try again. AT&T...I can think of a few abbreviations for it at this point. I just then spent 10 more minutes looking up insults beginning with the letters 'A' and 'T' just to make this humorous, but toilet humor is far below most of us right?
Grow up, really.
So the last five days have been absolutely mad. I've tried on numerous occasions to make time to update this thing, but we've literally been non-stop from 8AM to 11PM every single day. Plus it costs money per minute to use Internet anywhere. I wish I could be more consistent with things so I'd still be in awe and have the recent events fresh in my mind to make the writings better.
Given this, I'll start with today and work my way backwards. Hopefully it won't be too sterile by the end.
Today was unreal. It was our last day of travelling the North Island before we head down to the South Isle. We awoke in Rotorua (which I'll get to later) and had only a few hours to drive to Wiatomo for cave spelunking in the glow worm caves (black-water rafting!!!). We've managed to get lost driving to every single location so far, so we wanted to give ourselves plenty of time to get there. We left early, and lo and behold, we made it 1.5 hours early with no kinks. For those that don't know, black-water rafting is similar to white water rafting except that the water's not white, you're inside of a cave in freezing (literally) cold water, and instead of a big raft with sunlight shining you get a really small tube with glow worms and crickets jumping on you. Sounds bad maybe, but it was un-frikkin-real man. One of the best things done so far. After an hour of training stuff and hiking to the site in wetsuits (freezing by the way...it's about 45 degrees here), we had to jump off a 10ft high dock into a creek to start acclimating ourselves to the cold water temperatures. The water was around 45 degrees as well. Felt like 0. I can't explain how cold it was.
So we made it to the cave entrance. You'd think it'd be somewhat accommodating, being a semi-tourist attraction. Nooo...down in a verticle rocky hole, completely unkept and just begging to break any limb you manage to land on after slipping (a bit dramatic, I know). Things are much more laid back here...suing isn't a big risk, so precautions we're used to aren't common. Once inside they asked for a volunteer to go ahead of everyone, even the guides, into the unknown all by there self. That'd be me. stupid me. See, that's why I never raise my hand in class. and then the one time ya venture out of your comfort zone...
anyways, it was crazy. had to get over fear of bugs and claustrophobia real quick cause i had 10 other people following me. I also noticed that I was starting to get REALLY cold even when we first began wading into the water. more on that later. So we did a lot of neat stuff. Tubed through most of the cave. There were glow worms everywhere. Had to be completely dark (no helmut lights on) to see them. They hang from the ceiling and glow like stars, and they're everywhere. they were amazing. There were a lot of obstacles in the cave. It surprised me, because again it seemed too dangerous to be true. Turns out the jump we did off the 10ft dock was just to teach us how to jump blindly off the freakin waterfalls IN THE CAVE. You jump into nothing, backwards, holding your tube hard as you can against your butt. You hit the water a bit later really hard, sinking all the way down into freezing shock until the buoyancy lifts you back to an instinctual, whistling gasp for air.
So apparently, being skinny and up to your neck in freezing water down in a cave doesn't help your body temperature much. About halfway through the 2 hour cave journey I had the same guide ask me, "You okay, mate?" about 5 times. I started looking around to see if I was bleeding or something. Towards the end of the trip I noticed my chest joining my legs and arms in going chilled and numb. I started to get a little unclear in my thinking...not delirious or anything, but just a little foggy. Unconcerned about anything and not wanting to move much. I didn't even realize it, but apparently I was shivering pretty badly through the whole thing and the guides thought I was going to get hypothermia. My face went stark white, lips and everything else dark blue. Out of 11 people in our crew, I would be the one...Anyways, I was fine. They gave me a hot drink on exiting the cave and we had hot showers and such afterwards. It was unreal.
If you ever come to New Zealand, or any other country that might have underwater cave rafting, DO IT. It's one of the most unique and livening experiences I've ever had.
Ok...so i've been typing for over an hour and I've only covered one single event of the last five days. I'm exhausted and it's 3:43AM here. I have much needed downtime tomorrow here in Wellington so I'll finish writing about the rest of my week then. I need sleep now.
I dunno how commited or interested anyone is in this, so I apologize for the long delay in updating if you were waiting. This is also a record for myself so I hope no one sees it as conceded or anything...I don't care if anyone reads it. I'm glad if you do, and I love the comments. I'll add much much much more tomorrow. There's a lot more too add.
Sammy Joe
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Mom
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OMG
Sam J, do you remember my response to Mammoth Cave? I WOULD be dead right now if I had done what you did. My heart is so happy you survived and I'm happy for you that it gave you so much. Be safe and know you are loved. Mom.