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hi everybody,
this is the last blog from new zealand, on monday i will fly to santiago de chile to spend my last 7 weeks in south america ... thank you to all who writes mails or sms to me ... it's always good to hear something from home ;)
so back to new zealand, the days after daniela's departure were unspectacular, did pretty much nothing but watching movies in my hostel (e.g i watched the "famous" movie Hostel, where 3 backpackers are travelling to slovakia and 2 of them get killed in a very horrible way and the 3rd one can escape but loses 2 fingers .. and you see many details of killing etc. ...) ...
on tuesday i hired again a car (and again it was a nissan sunny) to go to waitomo caves the next day to do a guided cave tour with black water rafting, abseiling, cave walking etc. ... so left auckland on wednesday to arrive at waitomo 3 hours later ... guys, this tour was f***ing awesome, the best adventure i've ever done in my life ... first you got training in abseiling, and after this you do abseiling in a small black hole for about 40 metres ... you only hang in a rope, secured by a guide who is on the bottom ... i can't describe that, hanging in a black hole, just with your headlamp and getting down ... just awesome .. then we walked a little through the cave to stop at a canyon ... our guide told us:'now it's getting a little scary' ;) ... we had to turn off our head lamps, it was pitchblack ... we were fixed to a rope and were pushed to the other side ... we didn't see anything, suddenly our ride stopped and the other guide (at the beginning we had two guides for 4 people) picked us up ... this feeling "flying" over a canyon and don't see anything but glowworms on the cave ceiling was unique ... after that we got a cave snack (hot chocolate and cake) and then it was getting cold ... very cold! we got our rubbertubes and jumped into the river ... brrrrrrrrrrrrr, f***ing freezing ... we turned off the lights to enjoy the glowworms on the ceiling ... looked like the sky in a clear night ... we also got some education about glowworms and how this caves were formed (in fact, this cave system is about 50 km long, and even today sometimes new entrance into the caves are discovered ... there are some caving clubs in this region whose hobby is to search for new parts of the cave system) ... then we left our rubbertubes to walk further into the cave ... after a short break on the dry tour (you can also visit this caves in a dry way, i.e just walk on a walkway) we started to climb and squeeze through cave stones ... also had to crawl through mud ... but with doing this, you forgot how cold you felt ;))) the last big challenge was climbing waterfalls ... you had to trust completely your guide, as she (yes, we were guided by a woman) told us in a very noisy place where to step into, even if you can't see the rock behind the water ... this was really tough, but when we reached daylight, it was such a great feeling .. spent about 2,5 hours in the cave, as mentionned at the beginning, it was the best adventure thing i have ever done
after this adrenalin pushing adventure, i found a nice, quiet hostel (only 17 dollars per night, i had a room for my own) and decided to do a bungy jump the next day ;) so, next day, jumped into the car, drove 2 hours to Taupo and then did it ... i did the bungy with water touch, and it was fantastic ... it's nz highest water touch bungy jump (it was about 47 m) ... and the surrounding was also real beautiful ...
so, after these 2 adventures i'm back in auckland now for my last 3 days in new zealand ... i'm looking forward to south america, as this will be something completely different compared to the last 2.5 months (australia,nz) ... i will also have to learn some spanish, as english is only spoken in big cities ... well, i will find out ;)
keep in touch, cu
christoph
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