I looked forward to March for months. It was kind of my holy grail of months in New Zealand as bestie and the hubs were coming for a visit. It seemed like it took forever and then suddenly, bam, they were here!
I had a lot of fun while they were here and I really hope they did too. The day of their arrival we had a little dinner party at our house due to the fact that our friends, the Alexander's were in town for a visit from Oz. I swore and swore to myself all week that I was going to take some photos of the kids playing (my boys get on famously with the Alexander children), of Mrs. Alexander, who I was so thrilled to see before her move to the South Island and of my friend's who are adorable as ever, moving right into the third trimester of pregnancy - I didn't take one!
The rest of the time that bestie and the hubs were around simply flew by for me. We did the Auckland day thing and a trip out to Waiheke and then Jesse had this really "great" idea...he wanted to see the glowworm caves.
God help me.
It started out pedestrian enough, we took a nice little drive south-west.
When we arrived, they fitted us with wetsuits. We took a very dirty old van with two British hippies and were driven out into the middle of basically, nowhere. We learned how to abseil - wait, what? Abseil? I am totally afraid of heights and now we're going to abseil? Oh, but there wasn't a rock wall to rappel against, it was free abseiling into a dark hole in the ground. They were quick to warn us not to let go of the rope under any circumstances (like, oh, say a big spider jumps onto your face...)because the penalty is, wait, guess, guess...DEATH.
Here's how the rest went:
Half way down the rope, we come to a narrowing that we have to wriggle through -- okay, 17 meters down a hole and suspended with just a rope now I get to wriggle through a small opening in the rock - just gets better. When we finally make it down, we have to make sure we latch our hooks onto the guide-ropes, no one wants to fall off the scary enough platform into the abyss. Oh, next we get hooked up to a flying fox (zip line) so we can soar, alone, in the pitch black across the black river.
Quick break as they feed us high sugared treats so our blood sugar can continue to rage and our body heat can stay above hypothermia.
Break's over -- into an inter-tube we go to jump from a 15 foot rock into unknown (to me) black waters. Go ahead, jump! Dang, that's cold!
Oh, look there are glowing maggots on the cave roof...
After a little guided tour via inter-tube we take the tubes back and hike in the waist (and sometimes above my head) water for the next two hours. We stop again for another sugar and hot chocolate snack, hike some more. Fit through a little opening of rock (when there were actually lots of larger openings all around but this was the re-birth canal so we must!). Finally, it's time to free climb twenty feet up through a waterfall. At this point, I said, no thanks and walked out of the cave right around the corner. Bestie, the hubs and JJ were good sports and did the climb.
I'm not going to lie. I was annoyed. I had a good time but the truth is, building all the actual risk into the trip when it didn't have to be there was in my mind, silly. I didn't mind the black water or the hike or even the cold (I didn't really think it was that cold) but lowering myself down a rope and climbing on slippery wet rocks seemed ridiculous. We weren't really exploring this cave, we were doing a touristy thing. I don't get the point of forgoing the easy way in, floating on tubes ands seeing the glowworms and walking back out. The flying fox was fun too. I'm not risk adverse exactly but if I'm going to take risks, they should be worth something.
I will never forget bestie's trip and the fact that she and the hubs were the only ones (other than mamaw and junnie) who made the long, tiresome trip to the other side of the world, to see us. I'll never forget that JJ took three days off work to spend totally devoted to us. Those are reasons definitely worth scaling walls and flying through caves if I've ever heard any!
