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Today Dom was up at half past 6. Very much cold, and very much still dark. Ate a very quiet breakfast before going outside to wait for the bus. The bus was a bit late, but driven by a very nice english chap, so it was hard to be annoyed. This bus was to take me all the way to Waitomo caves, and then back in the evening, a drive of about 2hours each way. Occupied myself with podcasts on the way, since the scenery was not too much unlike England.
On arrival at the caves, I had a bit of a wait before my tour, but it gave me a good chance to wake up properly. The tour began at 11am and was called the Black Abyss. Sounds nice doesnt it! The first stage of this was to get all kitted up. As Shrek says, its like an onion, layers! Here we go: 1) wet-suit socks on 2)wet suit but no arms 3)jumper 4)wetsuit jacket 5)boots 6)helmet with lamp 7)harness. All sorted out and looking very attractive, it was a short bus ride to the cave entrance.
At the cave, we had to have a practice of abseiling
on a little slope, before we could hit the cave. Since only one abseil was involved, they wanted us to enjoy it, hence the practice! Not through choice, I was first down. The abseil was about 35m, straight down. It started off a nice size before becoming quite narrow as you go underground properly. You then came out into quite a large chamber as you descended the rest of the way. I am not embarrassed to say that during this, I had to stop midway as I was in quite a lot of pain, I will leave the guys to work that one out. Once everyone was down, about 8of us, we carried on into the cave.
It was largely just walking for the first bit, with a few climbs down, before we got to a big opening and drop. The way down, a zip line or flying fox. Now this was fun if a little freaky. They hook you up, let you go, and then turn their light off (everyone elses already off) so you cannot see where you are going. Not helped that the guy when he went down made a very big bang with something to
make it sound bad! At the bottom, we all sat down at the "long drop cafe" looking down into the water, and drank tea and had flap jack. Now i hate tea but it was cold so I had to have some!
Fed and watered, it was time to get wet. We were each given a tube or rubber ring, and told to hold it behind our bums and jump. Again, I went first but this time by choice. It was probably a 3-4m drop, and it made a loud bang as you hit the water. It was also very cold and took your breath away. Wetsuit did not help! We all got down and then paddled along the cave, looking at formations of rock and at the glow worms, which were amazing. With lights off you could actually navigate in the tube using just their glow, which incidently is just poo?!
After a while spent tubing, we left the tubes behind and moved on on foot, but still in water, any where from knee deep to shoulder deep, which required swimming, still cold!! During this stage of the trip we had to do a belly slide down
a water fall, swim/crawl through a rather small passage, and we also stopped for some hot orange squash and some chocolate. By this time I was desperate for the loo, and took a lot of will poer not to just go through my suit! The final stage of the journey was all about the ascent. This required some relatively dry walking through some very low tunnels, and at times quite narrow as well, before we were back in the water one last time. To get out of the cave, we had to climb up to water falls, and i mean climb, before finally making it back into light probably 3 hours later.
Back at the complex, we had warm showers, not hot, followed by bagels and soup, which went down very well. Though this was not before the effort of getting the gear all off again, which required team work and lots of pulling! All warm, we hopped back on the bus to come back to Rotorua.
We were dropped off at the hostel near mine, which has hot pools. Dom being Dom, I went up to reception and kindly explained that I wasnt staying but asked if
I could use the pools. The very nice girl on reception say yes, but warned the security guard might throw me out at 8. I enjoyed a very nice hour and a half in the pools, very warm, where i met a couple of guys, one from England, who asked if I wanted to go for some tea, why not, no other plans! Decided to go for another indian, but eat in this time. As I went abck to shower, I offered the girl at the desk $5 to say thank you but she wouldnt take it, fair enough!
Met Greg at 8 and we headed into town for a very nice indian, before going for a stroll around town to finally find a shop open to buy some supplies for tommorrow.
And that, was my very nice day!
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