At 7:30am, Manda and I had eaten breakfast and were picked up to be taken to ABISMO ANHUMAS!!!! It was discovered by accident in the 1970's after a bushfire destroyed the bush on someone's farm. The first people to explore the underwater network of caves all died, which is really comforting to learn in the car on your way to diving these caves. It is a huge 72metre rappel (like abseiling but with no footholds, see picture, that is abismo) into the abyss onto a platform on a large underground lake. We then would scuba dive the lake.

We made the mistake of looking down the tiny 1m x 1m hole in the earth to the water 72 metres below and both felt like getting back in the car. But because my old mate Brazilian Clarke Kent was there, I wasn't going to show anyone I was s***ting bricks. We got harnessed up and attached to our rope. With hardly any verbal instructions (no one really spoke English) we were told to GO and Amanda and I started the long and terrifying descent into the cave. The first part of the descent was so narrow we had to keep our legs attached to each other to stop us from hitting the side of the cave, then after about 10-15 metres, we entered the cave. If I wasn't so nervous I would have stopped to admire the beauty of the cave - huge stalactites hung from the ceiling, all different shapes and sizes and colours. The lake below was a bright blue and you could already see parts of the bottom from 60m up! Still, I couldn't wait to get to the platform so we lowered ourselves in record time.

After a fair bit of sitting around waiting for other groups to finish their snorkelling, we kitted up our tanks and jumped in the water which was a cool 18 degrees. Amanda had a minor freak out that she'd forgotten how to dive, having learnt on a drinking week in costa rica. I thought nothing of it and just said she'd be right and to stick close to me. I wish I'd listened to her. About 3 minutes into our descent, we were sitting pretty at 18 metres checking out the huge conus rocks in the water, when I turned around to see Manda shooting towards the surface in a ball of bubbles - she had inflated her BCD instead of deflated it, causing her to rise rapidly (the number one cause of the bends, which can kill you). Aside from that hiccup, we went back down and continued our dive with Amanda holing down the deflator button on her hose for the entire dive. The visibility was close to 50 metres and the large conus shaped rocks (the largest in the world) were out of this world. I felt like I was diving in star trek or something. We saw some anteater bones and at about 80 metres, sabre tooth tiger bones were discovered initially! We finished the dive, with me and Manda stoked to still be alive after our rapid ascent and even more on a high after seeing what we saw down there.

The time had come to then climb back up the 72 metres to the opening to the abyss. It was great being able to do it in reverse, as I was able to appreciate the scenery much more now that I wasn't so scared!! It really was breathtaking this cave literally underneath someone's cattle farm! Clarke Kent unhinged us when we reached the top some 15 mins later, and we were on a high for the rest of the day. We had dinner with a few people we had met that day and of course some caipirinhas went down pretty well.