Brandon and I left the kids with grandma and grandpa and headed into the "black abyss" (duh-duh-duh)!
We drove to the Waitomo caves where we took a 5-hour adventure tour of the glow-worm caves.
First stop ... abseiling training. We practiced a few times on this semi-steep hill and apparently that is enough to be "kiwi-certified" to rappel 115 feet into a black cave.
Here we go!!
After rappelling into the cave, we hiked a bit deeper inside and then ziplined even further down. From the picture below, we took a tube and jumped into ice cold cave water.
I can't be sure, but I think that's my backside.
And pretty sure this is Brandon's head.
At this point, we rode around the cave streams on our tubes and the guides told us different stories. I couldn't help but really hope that there wasn't a big earthquake during those 4 hours. There wasn't!
The Waitomo caves are filled with these glow-worms. I didn't get any pictures of them, but pulled these off the internet. You lay back, look up at the top of the cave and it looks just like a starry sky. They are actually the larvae of gnats that are trying to attract prey into their silk threads. They glow brighter if you make a loud noise.
As we were walking around in deep, freezing cold, dark, cave water the guides kept telling us that eels live in the caves. Brandon told me ahead of time that they just said that to scare people so I didn't worry too much about it. Right at the end - they showed us one of the cave eels - eewww! I'm glad I was blissfully ignorant about that for most of the tour.
Break for a snack & hot drink.
Climbing out - had to climb up two different waterfalls to get out.
We all made it!
This is how Perrie & Isaac's day went. Isaac looks like he'd rather be black water rafting!!
1 comment:
we didn't take pictures of all the exciting things the kids did - that's why they're tired!
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