The Last Hoorah

So, we traveled to Waitomo, our final destination in New Zealand. People started getting hard to look at, since we would soon be saying our goodbyes, but besides that bit of pain, there was happiness. We had one more day to spend exploring this amazing country and we were going to make the best of it.

7:30 am on Thursday, eight of us left to embark n our final activity for the adventure tour: BLACK WATER RAFTING!! It was an early morning, but we all had no doubts that it was going to be outstanding. Well, we were right. We got to The Legendary Black Water Rafting Company and geared up for our next five hours underground. Once again, wetsuits, thermals, booties, wetsuit jackets, and cave boots. After getting ourselves situated, we got into our harnesses and grabbed our helmets, snapped a jumping picture, and we were off.

Before we could go down, we needed to learn how to repel. So, we did a real quick course on how to repel and just like that it was time to go 70+ meters below the surface to start the cave tour of the glow worm caves. The repelling was amazing, through a small shaft down to the abyss. After we all got to the bottom, we followed our guide over a grate, that ended quite abruptly.

"Turn your headlamps off," our guide told us.

Uhhhhhhh...I was first. I was the one standing there with my twos hanging over the end of the grate peering into the black in front of me. We turned them off and I was again hooked up to a cable. Just like that I was zooming through the pitch-black, peering ahead of me into the abyss. A quick stop later and I was to another section of the cave. I turned my headlamp on and I had just zip lined in a cave! One by one the rest of my group went and one by one we were in awe of this amazing, hidden treasure deep below the earth.

We all sat, feet dangling over a rock edge, with a cookie and cup of cocoa in our hands. It reminded me of smoko when we were at the volunteer site. After we were finished with our cocoa, and finished deciding whether or not that was water below us, we were each given a black tube and one by one jumped. Yup, it's water. Thank the Lord. I was first as we followed our guide, led by a rope on the cavern wall. We looked all around us at the setting we were in and just couldn't believe our eyes.

At one point, we turned around, linked ourselves to one another, turned our headlamps off, and just watched above us, as our guide pulled us back to where we jumped. What I saw was unlike anything I had seen during the trip. I just sat there, warm in my wetsuit, starring and thanking everything and everyone in my head that I was there. The glowworms were beautiful. It's quite ironic though, because glowworms are actually not worms at all, rather fly maggots. And the things we see glowing are actually their feces at their tail end that secrete a chemical that glows. How beautiful that maggot feces was. It looked like stars in the sky, except they were sometimes in reach.

After getting rid of our tubes, we started trudging through the water, into shallow areas and deep pools. We crawled through tiny holes on our stomachs and under hangovers with only enough room for our heads. After taking another smoko [!!!] it was time to climb some underground waterfalls. No harnesses, just climb. It was fantastic. After five hours of peering through the abyss, 70 meters underground, the trip was over and we had to head home. It was the perfect amount of time and the perfect way to end the trip. We had the day left to pack and spend with friends.

That night, we had a big celebration down the road. We were celebrating all of the work we accomplished at our volunteer sites, a mere two weeks before. We were celebrating the new friendships we had made all throughout the trip. We were celebrating memories that we would never forget.

With that, ISV New Zealand 2009 was over. Finished. Complete. I had been successful with my volunteer work and successful in truly experiencing NZ for all it was worth. I