This year was awesomer.
We rented a car and started driving south. I had no idea what we were doing or where we were doing it, so navigation was a bit tricky. This was especially difficult, since Google Maps used different road names than the signs we saw.
However, after only a couple of wrong turns, we made our way to Adventure Waikato.
After a quick bite of lunch in the car, we met Simon, our guide for the day (he also owns the farm and Adventure Waikato). He gave us the slightly scary safety briefing (i.e. - "If something happens to me: this is where you need to go to get a cellphone signal, here are the GPS coordinates to give the 111 operator in case they need to get a helicopter, etc."), and then got us in our gear. After last year's adventure amongst the trees, I had a rough idea of what was in store when we put on our harnesses and helmets.
However, since I have never abseiled before (that's repelling, for those of you in the US), I didn't really know what was actually in store for us.
We walked through a couple of sheep fields to get to the top of a cliff. The farm on which Adventure Waikato is located has an extensive series of caves underneath it. A while ago (geologically speaking), the roof of part of these caves collapsed, leaving a deep valley.
Simon showed us how to tie the knot that would allow us to control our descent down the cliff face, then went part way down himself to be near the drop off point. I went first and was doing fine until I got to the vertical part of the cliff face. I found out the hard way that slippery rocks are slippery. Here are before and after photos as proof of my experiment:
I banged my knee on the rock face when I slipped. It is going to be stiff and sore for a while, but no permanent harm done.
Jen came down after I was safely at the bottom:
Here we are down at the bottom of the cliff, only slightly worse for the wear.
Once we were down, having both spent a portion of the trip down just sliding down the rock face on whatever part of our bodies happened to be there, Simon came down and showed us how to do it properly.
We then set off on a very cool trek through the bush at the bottom of the valley. There were a couple of rope/cable bridges that we got to cross (our experience from last year's event was extremely valuable).
There was also one point that we had to climb through a small tunnel under a rock fall. At this point, Jen was feeling bad about me hurting my knee and heroically threw herself down onto some underwater rocks to get a sympathy injury while we were crossing a pool of water at the bottom of the tunnel. She also managed to get soaked from the waist down, but kept the camera mostly dry.
At the end of the walk through the valley, we got to one of the cave entrances. Inside we found some amazing stalactite and flow formations:
This cave is also home to a colony if New Zealand's famous glow worms, whose fishing lines you can just make out in this picture:
One of the flow formations was looked a bit like a pipe organ, and, in fact, had some cool acoustic properties as well. This video doesn't show much, but it is Simon tapping the bottoms of the rock pipe with a carabiner:
After emerging from the cave, we climbed up to the top of a hill for our trip through the valley's grand climax: a flying fox. It was quite a lot of fun, even the bit where you go through the top of a tree.
Now, at this point, I thought we were done. I was wrong. There was more, and it was cool.
Jen had also signed us up for a run on their orienteering course. Simon gave us a compass, a list of bearings and clues and sent us on our way (after briefly explaining how to use the compass). That was a great deal of fun. We ranged all over the beautiful farm and got to see some amazing scenery.
We even finished before dark!
We were on the road as dusk was settling in and tried to make it back to the highway before full dark arrived. We did not quite make it, but we didn't have a whole lot of trouble finding our way back.
On our way home, we stopped at a place called Pokeno Bacon for dinner. It was everything it promised: every dish had bacon in it. Sadly, it was NZ style bacon, instead of American style bacon. However, it was still pretty good, though the macaroni and cheese was a little light on the cheese.
All in all, this was a fantastic weekend adventure. Jen and I found some new bruises and sore places this morning, so we knew that it had been our kind of adventure.
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