Just Do Weird Shit Pt.2
// January 27th, 2009 // Uncategorized
I’m pretty sure we left off with me having just reached the bottom of the rabbit hole. If it wasn’t surreal enough to be standing in a dark watery cave looking up 30m to where the world made some kind of sense, the other guide says “I hear you work in IT. So I’m thinking, and I’ve not researched it or anything about getting a new laptop, what would you recommend?”
For starters I’d recommend asking someone who works in Dixons, not someone who you met in a hole.
Annett rescued me from this conversation by dropping down just a few minutes behind me. The sounds was uniquely Annett a combination of ranting, swearing and general hysteria in a mix of German and English. What was unusual were her bloodied hands, a result of her gripping the rope so tightly that the burns from which she is still suffering broke the skin. How she dropped any distance with a grip that tight is somewhat of a miracle but for a girl who can find stress in any circumstance as her brain cycles through a never ending loop of worst case scenarios, the fact that she’d attempted it at all was pretty impressive. I was proud of her. All bloodied but still challenging her fears, which are pretty much everything.
Next we skirted round to a zip line. This area was unlit except for a ceiling of glow worms. I was first and through the cave I hurtled attached to the zip line staring up at a sky of animal stars wondering where the red button the guide said I’d need to press to stop was. I could see no red button, just a wall, which didn’t appear to be red, at least no yet as it wasn’t smeared with my carcass a technicality that was going to change rapidly if I didn’t stop. Luckily I did stop, the red button gag had been nothing but a cruel joke. I stopped on a ledge, watched everyone else have a go and then we lined up to jump 20ft off the rock edge into the freezing water below. I was glad I didn’t have to go first for this one and once the other members of the group had tested the water for rocks, I, jumped for it as well.
The water was cold and wet, so often how it’s served I’ve found. We had black rubber rings to sit on and could paddle with our arms or where they were provided pull ourselves along with the cave using the ropes attached to the wall. Using the lights from our head torches we could partially illuminate the majestic, huge cave covered in glow worms. For the next hour we paddled, swam, walked, slid, crouched, crawled, our way through the cave (we’d signed up for the extreme course) navigating our way back towards the surface. Despite a scary moment where we got lost and separated from the group in a narrow passage of tunnels, Annett’s head torch stopping working we re-emerged to kiss the sweet, sweet turf of civilization. Should the earth become over-populated and we have the choice of moving underground or up to colonize space, I’ll be on that shuttle before you can say ‘Neil Armstrong’.
Tense and unsure if this whole adrenaline thing was going to work out, we retired to our novelty accommodation, the captains quarters of a converted ship. It was noveltyastic with a little mini chandelier and portholes and other ship type stuff. They also have a hobbit hotel and a plane and a train which have all been converted into noveltyastic accommodation. They also had sheep, idyllic scenery and no caves so it was rather pleasant and fitting for two residents from the city of sails.
On Saturday we rose early to drive to Taupo for our skydive. We’d originally tried this last July, but it was too cold and windy and they wouldn’t let us jump. But January in NZ is akin to August in Europe so without a cloud in the sky we had no excuse this time. It was a beautiful drive through the back-roads of NZ, two hours of pure bliss as we saw almost no cars but plenty of breathtaking scenery. As I’ve said before living in NZ is like living in the middle of a painting, a painting of rolling green hills, empty beaches and blue vistas. Taupo is a nice little town on the edge of Lake Taupo a huge volcanic lake, 160km in diameter. We didn’t have too long to enjoy it today as we were heading out of town to the airport to do our skydive.
Since the moment my feet (oh no wait actually it was my ass again) first touched the ground at the end of the jump, I’ve been trying to put into words how it felt to do a skydive. I’m still nowhere near, which is partly why I’m writing this post as the act of having to write it down should help my poor little man brain process and file it away. All I can up with to describe it so far is intense. This was the one word I used immediately after it when the staff and fellow jumpers were ask me
“How was that for you then?”/“How was it?”’/“Incredible huh?”
“Erm, it was intense” was all I could muster. Other people were literally, and figuratively doing cartwheels, whooping, hollering and celebrating having tumbled 12,000ft from a plane and survived with the help of a big duvet and a bald Bavarian. My face was more ‘glad that particularly long trip to the dentist is now over, hope that’s it for another year’ than the standard ‘sweet, rejoice, look how brave I am, I’m king of the world I can cheat death and I so can’t wait to get this on Facebook and make everyone jealous they’re going to hear every detail on Monday’ which was the expression everyone (incl. Annett) was wearing.
Final part will be posted same time tomorrow.
Possibly related, hopefully entertaining other posts:
-
Marcus
-
Annett
-
adam
-
Annett
-
Alex
