The Challenge Begins

I met Lauren at the McDonalds and met the rest of the group not much after. We loaded our stuff into two separate vans, divided up, and hit the road. It’s cloudy and overcast and raining and beautiful all at the same time. Looking into the country, it feels like a larger Hawaii or a scene from Jurassic Park. The hills are capped with old forest, sometimes massive stands stick out from the plains, and always the hills are chased by further hills shrouded in the mist. The driving on the left hand side isn’t quite something I’m adjusted to quite yet, but luckily I’m also not driving. Quite yet. Today’s post is short because we’ve not done much yet, but we drove for about three hours to Waitomo with an hour stop for groceries and just visited. It’s very pretty here and I hope tomorrow is clear so that we can get a better view of the panorama. But I should get some rest to recover from the fact that it’s now Wednesday night and I’ve only slept 15 minutes since Sunday night. Which itself was a short sleep. Tomorrow, rappelling and black water rafting. Apparently the cave is lit with glowworms.

OK, today is now tomorrow. It’s down under, you’ll have to get used to it too. I’m going to be writing from the future a lot. We woke up in the morning and I had my first ever peanut butter and jam sandwich, which was a lot more delicious than I imagined. I would never have tried it were there honey around, but I’m glad there wasn’t. Then, it was off rappelling while the other half of the group went black water rafting. The walk there was nice and scenic, as you’ll hopefully be able to tell from the photos, and the actual abseiling was cool too. I mean, it’s not a rush other than the initial part where you throw yourself over the edge and hope your knots are done right, but it’s still nice to be there and look around as see how fast you can descend.

We broke for lunch and then it was off black water rafting. Which sounds extreme, but it really isn’t. We just made our way into a cave with some inner tubes and floated along. There were indeed glow worms, although they’re not really worms at all but maggots. I guess they glow to attract food onto a sticky little tentacle which they then reel in and munch on. My dad would've loved it. We sat in the sun because, if I hadn’t mentioned, it’s a beautiful day (+31, I heard) and so what the heck. I still can’t believe how much little things like the treed mountains can keep me staring at them, they just look so untouched, like little chunks of rainforest in the sky.

I was on cooking duty that night, so I helped BBQ the chicken and slice tomatoes. I sat with one of the Laurens, who actually seems pretty cool. Then, I used my Canadian talents as furnace starter (which, admittedly, are none) and got the hot water working for our little campground. Basically it’s a wood stove, so really, it’s just starting a fire, but hey, it was MY fire. Which helped with the dishes I was doing pretty much single-handedly.

This was because we got distracted midway through by some oohs and ahhs and people running for cameras and went outside to discover a comet streaking for the horizon. I’ve never seen a comet before, so this was a definite thrill. Apparently, another star lover on the trip said that it starts with an “M” (I just googled and discovered it's McNaught) and is so visible because it went close enough to the sun for the heat to help break it apart. And if that wasn’t enough, I have to tell you that the night sky I saw on this little island was like nothing I’ve ever before seen. The milky way was practically raining down on us, there were stars from horizon to horizon (tonnes of them), and you could actually see two blurs in the sky that we suspect were Andromeda and some other galaxy. Plus satellites and shooting stars and all the usual fun stuff. Amazing, and this is only day two.

We kicked off the next morning at 7AM with a little spelunking, or caving, or whatever you’d like to call it. It was intense, a lot more about really caving and a lot less handholding. I’m pretty much only typing this portion with one finger because every other muscle in my body is aching. We wedged, stretched, pulled, rappelled, climbed, jumped, crawled, and made our way through over 2km of underground cave (called Lucky Strike) before emerging from a grueling end into the sun. I went with the two Laurens, Dustin, and Katie, who pretty much are the older crew. By which I mean that they’re 22-25 and 29. The drive there was beautiful, the tea stop was great, and accidentally winding up at a dead end after working so hard to get through were all just what I’d wanted. I was very, very sore and tired after, and that's a good feeling. A hard day's work. Or something. We came back, had dinner, and then I walked with a few of the others into the surrounding hills. Something I wouldn't dare do in Australia, but apparently there's nothing to worry about here. We climbed a few hills and I showed off my new spelunking skills, then headed into town for a beer or two before calling it a night.

We finally leave Waitomo tomorrow and I’ll hopefully find a phone and an internet connection – I still haven’t called home! And I have to wish both my parents happy birthday, so it’s even more important, although I’m sure they’ve figured out that I arrived here fine. Hope everyone is doing well at home and talk to you soon.

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