Christian & Mari Down Under: Midsemesterbreak day 4: Waitomo Caves

We drove straight from Rotorua to Waitomo early in the morning and hooked up with Kieran McKay, who runs an adventure company called Absolute Adventure. Absolute Adventure provides authentic caving experiences for the active and adventurous - like ourselves. This was off the beaten track, a full-on adventure with a high level of physical and mental challenge rarely found in tourism today.We entered the cave at 11pm and returned around 3 hrs later. During those three hours, we had traversed high-level passages, explored beautiful streamway passages, viewed stunning crystal formations, rock-climbed, abseiled and climbed waterfalls. It was perfect!

It was a lot thougher than we had tought, but also much cooler than we had expected. It definitley got the adrenalin pumping. We had to wear climbing securitybelt under the whole trip, and the trip was pretty physical demanding. So in the end I was really glad I went down there with Christian and Jørgen. The last part of the trip was up again throug the river. It was very wet and the water was pretty cold, so that made it harder for the mucles to function properly:) And walking and climb against the current is not easy. But with Christian pulling me up with his hand and Jørgen pushing my butt, I also did made it to the end. We had to abseil(rappellere) three times during the walk.

I was terrified the first time, because I had no idea of how to do it, and it was scary to just trust the rope, and go 18 meters down in a black hole, with just a lot of water and rock underneath me. But we made it all three, and that was a cool feeling:)

It was really small passages some places, so it was good that we had not gained to much weight after we arrived here. I could almost not pass some of the places, so it was nothing for persons with claustrophobi. So if anybody is planning on going to New Zealand, then this is definitley something you should try!