The Lost World Adventure

Hey all. Not long left now till we're off to Chile, but we've still got quite a bit left to fit in.We're looking forward to some warm tropical weather as we head up to the Northland. Today was the big day - we ventured into The Lost World! We were both surprisingly cool about the whole thing until stepping onto the platform where you started the abseil! We had to sit out on this bar while the guide strapped us up which was as scary as the 100m abseil I thought! There was only 3 of us doing it this morn plus the guide. It was far more hardcore than I had expected cos they downplay it as being peaceful in the leaflets! I was doing okay on the descent for like the first 10-15mins, thinking it couldn't be much further but then he anounced we're about halfway and I was like, what?! The further down you decended, the harder it was to control so I started finding it harder to slow down and stopping was near impossible...eek. I had anticipated a fairly easy caving experience too as it had a rambo rating of 6/10 but maybe 6/10 for hardcore cavers! There was no squeezing (thank goodness) but a lot of thought had to go into negotiating the rocks and a lot of trust had to go into the grip on your wellies! Thank you John & Fiona for the rock climbing practice - it really helped in a hairy situation! We were mainly in huge caverns climbing over and under big rocks. Its crazy there's this whole huge world beneath us. Halfway through the trip we took a snack break with our lights off to admire the gloworms. They were all over the cavern so it was like the night sky but underground...!?! Finally we had to climb up a 30m ladder! It was one at a time so Chris had to hang back in the dark on his own while I took ages to get up the ladder! 4 hours later we finally returned! Man, I'm shaking just typing about this - as much as I enjoyed it, there were a few s*** your pants scary moments. You can't take your camera down so I've attached a couple of cheesy ones we got on a CD. On our way to a spa now (can't wait) then hopefully a bit of beach before the flight on tuesday.