Waitomo Caves- Lost World Epic

While on our recent New Zealand holiday Jason, Blossom and I did the Waitomo Adventure Company's Lost World Epic (7 hour trip). This trip is Waitomo's Ultimate Adventure. It starts with a 100m abseil into the surreal Lost World.

The descent takes about 30 minutes. We then had lunch down below before taking the wet way out! Heading upstream, walking, swimming and climbing through cathedral-size vaults.

We emerged several hours later and enjoyed a hot shower & well-earned dinner BBQ meal near the cave before heading back to Waitomo.

In more detail... our morning started pretty early as we were driving from Taupo to Te Kuiti, we needed to be at the Adventure company about 10am. Both Blossom and I were a little scared as heights and abseiling are things that scare us. Jason on the other hand was really looking forward to it all.

The first thing we did was fill out the pre-screening questionnaires. Jason struggled a bit with this- answering no to the "can you speak and understand english" question. However, this was not as bad as the man from Lichtenstein who answered yes to the "are you pregnant" question. This got us all off to a good start, providing a good ice breaker.

After about 20 minutes we were packed into a van and we were off... it was about a 15 minute drive to the start of the trip. Once we got there we had to get into our outfits... dungaree style wetsuit, with a wetsuit jacket over the top, white gumboots, caving helmets and the all important harnesses. We looked somewhat reminiscent of the Village People!!!

The first 20 minutes or so were all about familiarisation with the rope techniques for when we were in the cave and getting used to the height for the abseil.

Here we are on the rope line above the cave.
Here we are on our way down to the viewing platform. Check out how tentative I am compared to Jason... he's just walking down the stairs normally!Here was our first glimpse down into the living window and where we were going to be abseiling down into. However, this was only about 60m high, we were going to be abseiling 100m!!!!!
So after the familiarisation it was off to the real deal. It was about here that I started on the "I'm not sure I want to do this anymore" business!!! Unfortunately it was a little too late to be making that decision.
The first thing that we had to do was to step out, swing round and sit on a beam (which is suspended 100m above where we had to drop to). This was SOOOOOO scary for me to do, and once I was sitting there my leg just would not stop shaking!!!! The vibrations were massive. I am pleased to see that Blossom looked somewhat apprehensive as well. As we were sitting there Jason tried to comfort me and I said to him (imagine a slightly manic tone) "don't touch me"!!! I was just worried about moving really!
The great thing was, what we had already done was pretty much the hardest that we really needed to do and to abseil off, all we needed to do was just step off the ramp and we were off.

Yay!!! I did it!!! and no tears at all (I was fighting them off at times though). The good thing is once we were off it was pretty easy. My weight was enough to just lower myself down nice and easy. Jason had to work a little more on his control

Here we are just hanging around! A rather unique signature shot for us!
And here's Blossom!
Once we started the 30 minute descent you get a chance to look around and it is totally stunning! Our day was a little overcast so we had some beautiful ethereal mist around us!
Check me out now, abseiling like a pro! No worries at all now.
We had 6 customers on the course with 2 instructors. Each group of 4 descends at the same pace. We were a little slower than the other group. Here you can see them below us.
This next shot would have been great, but Blossom and Jason both look a little spazzy in it hehehe.
Wow, looking around was truly amazing and this trip was starting to rank right up there in the awesome things that I have done in my life! There is still a wickedly long way to go :-)
Check out the water down there...right in the middle of the photo, that's where we were headed!!!
I have included a couple of the promo shots for you. It really is hard to describe how awesome it was down there.

After 30 minutes we got to take a seat and enjoy lunch. Sandwiches, chocolate biscuits, shrewsbury's and hot drinks! Wow, this trip was wicked so far. I could probably have gone home then and been satisfied. However we still had 5 more hours to go and a number of times that I had to challenge myself (more so than the abseiling challenge that I had already achieved)...

While we were eating our lunch we were visited by a big fat eel that the guides seem to feed every time they come down here. As we were eating lunch another group abseiled down... here they come.
After lunch it was time to have a little play round downstream. We had to drop down a little tunnel first of all. I did warn the guide never to take a photo of a girl from this angle, but it turned out ok.Here's Jason.
This is the waterfall that we go to play in and around for a bit.
Me, Jason and Blossom under the waterfall. The water was VERY strong. We were not too cold in our wetsuit come village people outfits!
After a little play around we started to head upstream. We had 2km to traverse... this took the better part of 4 hours! Looking back to the entry we got some great silhouette shots. Here I am trying to do the running man...Jason is below doing Karate Kid.
This is looking back at the entrance, the last natural light we would see for a while.
Here's the first of many squeezes through some tight spots.

A little way into the trip we climbed up over a big rock... and then we had to jump down about 8m into the unknown. Everyone turned their lights off and we had to trust ourselves and just do it. I really struggled with the jump and needed about 15 different countdowns to actually do it. Everyone else did it first go. Oh well... every group needs a scaredy cat right?

After the jump into the abyss there was some climbing involved. This was optional and I didn't do it as I was pretty tired from running 59.8km 2 days before. I was losing my leg strength so I just had a little break while the others challenged themselves.
Jason in the water leading up to his climb.
Jason negotiating the climb.
And here I am taking the easy way out and climbing up the ladder haha.
After this section of the cave we had to do another jump into the darkness. It as way easier this time. We also had a little break, we sat down with a chocolate fish and some hot orange juice. These snacks were pure heaven after the hard work of rock hopping, bouldering, swimming, climbing, water running, and squeezing through gaps.

It wasn't long and then we were off again, to the smallest of gaps for the whole trip.
Seriously, we can't make it through there can we??
Well I can, I was pleased to see how easily I managed to slither through the gap.
Jason was a little more restricted. But still smiling and still convinced that he would make it through the gap.
And here's Jason feeling a little concerned at trying to get through the gap.... but he made it in the end. It just involved wiggling a little at a time. It probably didn't help that Blossom was on the other side putting stones in Jason's gumboots as he was trying to wiggle through.
Yay, we're finally out of that skinny hole, back into the water.The next part of the trip played with all our senses. We were in totally black cave, with no glow worms whatsoever. We had to make our way just by touching the wall on our right hand side. It was so hard to do and I got disoriented within minutes. All I wanted to do was put my headlamp on but I persisted. Luckily I was behind Jason so I held onto him for a bit. It felt like we went hundreds of metres in the dark, but in reality, we probably only traveled 20 - 50m.

We then arrived in a massive cathedral like cave with literally thousands of glow worms. In order to survive, glow worms build traps of vertical hanging silk thread studded with sticky droplets to catch insects that are attracted by the worm's glow. It was surreal just lying there on the rocks with the glow worms lighting the cave up for us.

From the stunning light show we had a bouldering challenge (a style of rock climbing without a rope not very high off the ground- or water in our case). We were not allowed to touch the water... the bouldering was hard for me as by this stage I was pretty tired, but I got through it.

And finally after 4 hours of caving, here was the light at the end of the tunnel.
Wow, we made it! Wicked.

We celebrated the trip with a wicked water fight!

After the water fight we climbed up the side of the river, then it was just a short 20 minute trek back across farmland back to the start of the trip.

During this time we could reflect on what we had just experienced, and I tell you what, I was exhausted but totally stoked with what we had done. I was so pleased to have made the effort.

After our hot showers (heaven- but marred slightly by our lack of towels) we had a gourmet BBQ cooked by the guides. What a wicked day trip and totally worth the money that we spent on it. I would recommend this trip to everyone!

New Zealand Holiday

For the second year in a row Jason and I headed back to New Zealand during March. Last year it was for Jason's 30th birthday. This year it was for a wedding and a 60km running race (I will post about both these in the next couple of days so watch out for the updates). This blog is just a general blog about the holiday, the big things that we did will have their own updates.

We planned to be in New Zealand for 17 days which is a nice long break. Instead of heading back to Wellington we only went as far as Taupo. We hired a house and gave an open invitation to all our family and friends to head up to visit.

The journey started well after a hectic week (I worked 62 hours in the week leading up to the holiday) and we were lucky enough to have a ride to the airport with our friend Richard. This would be more of a blessing in disguise that what we originally thought as we missed a major storm in Perth and had our car been parked at the airport we would have come back to shattered windscreens from the tennis ball sized hail stones!!! There was some major damage! So you will understand what a relief it was to have our car parked nice and safely under the car port at the apartment.

Anyway, back to the blog at hand. Holiday time... so once we made it to the airport I breathed a sigh of relief. I had just finished a manic week and it was great to finally be on holiday. We started with some duty free shopping (new sunnies and books for both of us) and then waited around for the flight.

The flight was horrible as per usual. It leaves 5.50pm Perth time and we arrive in Auckland 6am NZ time (which is 1am Perth time)... I was lucky enough to sleep for about 4 hours, but Jason never does. This trip was going to be a bit harder as well as we were driving to Taupo (about 3.5 hours) instead of flying to Wellington (1 hour).

We picked up the hire car and were finally really on the way. It was a beautiful morning in NZ and NZ is so, so, so much prettier than Western Australia. It was somewhat colder though, we left Perth in 42 degrees and Auckland was 12 when we landed. Here Jason is with our hire car for the trip and having his first ciggy for the day. He was shivering by the end of the smoke!! It was nice to be cold again :-)

Check out my new sunnies... So after nearly 18 months in Aussie I have become used to long straight roads so I got a little car sick on the trip down to Taupo. Crazy!

It was a pretty uneventful drive to Taupo, but we were really pleased to get there. Here's Jason just hanging out on the deck of our new house for the next 2 weeks.
The first weekend was Jason, me, Ken and Rona and it was great to catch up over a few wines, beers and some great bbq's (including a great bbq'd/smoked pork loin). Jason and I don't have a bbq in Aussie so we wanted to make use of it while at the bach.

Unfortunately for me and my crazy hair brained ideas my real holiday wouldn't start for a week- after my running race. In the lead up days I still had to run every day. My first run was along the huka falls walkway. This is one of my favourite places to run in NZ... while I was running Jason, Ken and Rona walked to Huka Falls (Jason has kayaked these falls). Here's a couple of shots Jason took:
We also had lunch at the Prawn Farm. Great for me and Ken... not so much on the menu for Jason and Rona- although their hot chips did look nice.

Ken and I shared a platter of prawns for two (1kg of prawns). They were tossed in garlic butter and served with a garlic and sweet chilli sauce. On the side we had fresh bread and a prawn cocktail.... mmmmmmmm!!! Check it out...here I am peeling the first of many prawns...
Yummo... these were great!
Apparently I eat faster than Ken... check out how many have disappeared from my side compared to Ken's hehehe...
The leftovers!
Here's Jason at lunch! I was allowed to try some of his chips but not with my prawn fingers.
This is the view that we had for our lunch.
On Monday morning Jason and Ken went fly fishing and I picked up Lorry from the airport. Ken and Rona went back to wellington after a thoroughly enjoyable weekend and it was just me, Jason and Lorry until Wednesday. During this time we played the first of many mini golf games for the holiday. I won by MILES! 52 shots to Jason's 60 and Lorry's 68 shots.

Here's Jason and Lorry cooking yet another BBQ dinner.
Close up on the steak and chips. Jason cooked every night on holiday and there was only one night where the BBQ wasn't used... and we were out for dinner that night.
After dinner I got some nice sunset shots, while Jason and Lorry caught up on the last 2 years.
On Wednesday Nicci and James (Jason's godson) arrived. Check out James, I think he liked the new digger we got him.
It was great to spend some time with James. He has grown up so much in the year since we have seen him. Here he is with his rabbit nose... followed closely by Jason.
How cute is this...
I hadn't been feeling well and was worried about my race. I didn't know whether it was just post flight tiredness or not so I went to the doctor. Unfortunately this visit left me feeling very unwelcome in NZ. I filled out the new patient form with my Aussie address but picking New Zealander as my ethnicity. Anyway, the receptionist said that I couldn't possibly state that I am of New Zealand ethnicity as I had an Australian postal address... SERIOUSLY! Anyway, she changed it to "ethnicity undefined"....I was gob smacked and unfortunately just got upset internally and never said anything!!!!!! I wish that I had of as changing someone's form is illegal!

Anyway the doctor was no better, she said that I was fine apart from the swollen glands and lymph nodes and for my sake she hoped that it wasn't glandular fever... great, what a way to make me feel better for my race!!!!!!!! Anyway, enough of that- back to the god parts of the holiday.

On Thursday Jason, me, Lorry, Nicci and James visited Orakei Korako (see recent blog post on this) and Leza arrived in Taupo. She had just finished competing at the NZ surf nationals in Ohope, picking up a few national titles in the process. Well done!!!

Before I knew it, it was Friday and the day before my BIG (and I mean big- 59.8km) race. Me, Jason and Leza drove to Rotorua on the Friday to do the race registration and some course familiarisation. I will blog about the actual race in the next day or so.

On the way to Rotorua we stopped in at my old primary school- Mihi Primary. Very fond memories of my time here.
I stayed the night in Rotorua with the Tickelpenny's and Jason and Leza went back to Taupo to a full house. While we were away for the day Rona, Ken, Melissa, Blossom, Carol and Martin Taylor all arrived in Taupo for the busy second weekend...

I won't talk about the race at all in this blog. SO will skip to post race (briefly)...after the race we all congregated back in Taupo and had another great BBQ. Great times were had by all- lots of good food, wine and laughs!!!! It was a stunning evening in Taupo- check out the photos below- and I made it to about 11pm (I think)... it was probably from all the caffeine I had during the race rather than any new magical staying up power (anyone that knows me, knows that I am usually asleep by 9pm).

This is the view of Lake Taupo from the deck in Taupo.
After an early morning Brunch with Megan Harrison (great to see you) I spent much on Sunday asleep and generally recovering. It was a pretty quite day all round. We said goodbye to Leza, the Taylors, and Lorry, Nicci and James.

Sunday night included the worlds best roast lamb, cooked on the BBQ. It was SOOOOOO good, cooked over 4 hours with Moroccan seasoning and smoked with bourban flavoured wood chips. It was my favorite meal of the WHOLE TRIP!!!!!!! Yummo!

On Monday morning, Jason and Ken went fly fishing again and after that Ken, Rona and Melissa were all gone. So from a very busy house, it was just Jason, Blossom and me left.

By this stage my pre race cold has reared its ugly head and I was fully sick by now... but it didn't hold me back. On Tuesday we did a 7 hour caving epic at Waitomo Caves (I will leave the detail on this trip to a post of its own). All I will say was that it was a WICKED day!!!

While we were waiting for Blossom's girlfriend Kate to arrive we visited Aratiatia Rapids. Every day the dam does 3 - 4 releases of water. The is the river pre-release.
Here's Blossom waiting for the release.
Jason looking cool in his new sunnies.
Finally- a signature shot of me and Jason!!!
Here is the river mid release. That big rock in the middle at the top was about 8 metres tall before the release and by the end of it, it was totally covered in water!
Kate arrived on the bus mid afternoon and we were off to the next mini golf challenge. Which Jason, Kate and Blossom made into a drinking game. It was couples against couples and Jason and I took it out. Kate and Blossom had to shout the next game as the result.

All I can say about the rest of the evening is that it degenerated into a very drunken night. We played numerous drinking games, which Blossom wasn't very good at. This is the only photographic evidence of the night.
It was a great night for all, but unfortunately (as with the best of them) the next day wasn't too pleasant for Blossom. The rest of us felt good though.

Jason and I were feeling a little cooped up so we visited Craters of the Moon. Apparently in the 1950s a large area of land north of Taupo suddenly began to get hot and emit steam. Craters of boiling mud emerged, along with other geothermal phenomena. And so the Craters of the Moon was born.

The event was triggered by the lowering of underground water pressure by a nearby geothermal power station. Superheated water rose to the surface, escaping through any vent it could find.

Here's Jason checking out one of the craters.
Me and Jason with the steam behind us.
More of the craters...
Later in the day, when Blossom was feeling a little better Jason and I cashed in on the mini golf game that Kate and Bloss owed us. Unfortunately this time we were well beaten. My game was well off! any unfortunately Jason's good game wasn't enough to pull us through.

Jason and Blossom playing for par on one of the holes.
Blossom looking surprisingly chipper after his big night.
Jason in his new shirt which everyone loves on him!!!
Me trying to pull my game back together... it didn't work! Everyone got a hole in one but me.
Kate and Blossom shouted and me and Jason dinner and then it was time to say goodbye. Our holiday was fast coming to an end. We left Taupo and headed back to Rotorua for Sam's wedding. This will also be the subject of its own blog so I will just briefly chat about Rotorua.

We visited my Grandparent's grave, which was sad. I took a photo for my mum. Its been years since we lost them but the visit made me remember the great times we had growing up in both Rotorua and later on Waihi Beach.

After the visit we played another mini golf game but my heart wasn't really in it. Jason had a good game but I was ready to head to our new bach...

You'll have to wait a week or so to hear about the wedding but just to round out the holiday, Jason and I drove back to Auckland on the Sunday afternoon. Stayed a night in Auckland and then flew out to Perth on Monday afternoon. Our plane was delayed a couple of hours so we paid for a one off entry into the Koru lounge, which was a great decision in the end.

So after an action packed, family and friend filled holiday we were back in Perth. It was a great break, but as usual, its nice to be home.

Till next time.