We spent Wednesday morning black water caving...this started with a 35 metre absail into the caves (which was very tight at some points) and was followed with 2 hours of zip-lining, tubing, climbing and swimming around in the underwater pitch-black caves...The way out involved a climb up 3 waterfalls, just like in the movies, i felt like Data out of the Goonies!!!. After that we headed down to Taupo (pronounced Toe-paw) which is located on a huge lake that was formed after a massive volcano blast a long long time ago.
Thursday morning we were up at 6am to do the Tongarero crossing an 18k walk that goes over the 3 volcanoes that are in the national park. It took us 5 and a half hours and it was really hard in some places but the views were well woth it, the last hour was really flat but my feet felt like they were on fire, I was willing for the end to come! We managed it tho, and it gave a sence of achievement to have completed it! The highest peak was 18000 metres so not bad going for amateur hikers. It was where they filmed alot of the scens for Mordor and Mount doom for the Lord Of The rings....I was in my element along the way, i felt like frodo himself on his quest to rid himself of the bloody ring. If that wasn't enough for the day on our way back we did our skydive...
Definately the best thing Ive done so far, it was amazing. A very surreal experience indeed. We didnt hang around long, from arriving in the building, paying and getting our brief we were then up in the plane after about 20 minutes - no time to reconsider or get scared! We jumped from 15,000 feet..you were strapped to somebody, and you had another guy jump with you who took pictures and filmed it. When it was my turn to jump I had to just sit on the edge of the plane and then we went!! The 1st few seconds i didnt really know what was going on, even more so 'cause as soon as we were out the plane we did a backflip before we started freefalling. We had 60 seconds of freefall (it seemed way less), which was the biggest adrenaline rush you could ever have. You could see for miles, we were right over the big lake, and then you could see all the mountains in the background. I have loads of photos and a DVD of it all which is really good so ill get photos uploaded and the DVD sent home for you to look at.
Friday we headed to River Valley, a tiny tiny place, in a valley, on the river! It was pretty chilled out there so we spent the day lazong around. This morning we did white water rafting. The one we did was a grade 5 which is the highest level (bigger and better rapids). Because the water level was low me and lee went in a 2 man which made it more fun..it was harder to communicate and steer, but we got used to it in the end. The biggest drop we did was a 2 metre waterfall, which nearly had us fall in, but due to our expert navigating, steering, and a spot of luck, we managed to stay on board.
After that we headed to the capital city, Wellington. We're hanging around here 'till Thursday. We've got tickets for the Cricket tomorrow, the England v New Zealand Test Match, so we'll be there (look out for us on Sky Sports News) and then were gonna have a few days to chill out, do some laundry and upload some photo's.
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