Speak Up, Sir

I've officially made an "American" of myself for the first time. While discussing society and it's possible influences on the individual, my SOC 211 teacher asked if there was anyone from The States present in the class. After remaining cool and sizing up the situation, I grew excited when I realized that I was, in fact, the only American in the room! What a cool feeling to be the absolute outsider, the diamond in the rough. I raised my hand slowly and cooly, ordering myself harshly NOT to make stupid American out of myself. I felt as if I was a cultural ambassador upon whom all would judge the mental capacity of my home country. The teacher acknowledged me, smiled, and proceeded to ask me a few questions concerning differences I've noticed between New Zealanders and Americans in regards to interpersonal communication. After considering, I gave him a fairly intelligent answer in a clear and concise format. When all was said and done, I breathed a small sigh of relief, happy that I didn't let my country down. The teacher smiled, paused for a moment, and then said to the class, "Now, who can tell me the difference between how I'm talking and how he's talking?" Almost instantly, four hands went up. I was completely at a loss as to what the answer might be, other than the obvious accent. Perhaps this was the point he was about to make? The teacher selected a hand. "He's a bit louder than you..." said a girl in the front. "Yes, thank you," said the teacher, "on the whole, Kiwis are much more soft spoken than Americans, who tend to come off a bit louder in the classroom and in social settings. When I travel to New York, I often feel myself having to yell in order to be heard." After assuring me that he wasn't bringing my way of communication DOWN in any way, and thanking me for volunteering, the professor went on with his lecture. I was stunned. Despite my grandest efforts, I had completely played into an American stereotype without even realizing or apprehending it. I was half shocked and half...actually sort of amused. The teacher KNEW that I would prove his point before he even met me or acknowledged me chiefly because of the society that I grew up in. It didn't wildly offend me or leave me feeling ridiculed, as the teacher handled it respectfully, but it certainly put me in my place and spurred my awareness of myself and how I act on a global, sociological scale. Already I'm beginning to learn more about different ways of living and communicating, especially noting how my own ways of life relate to New Zealand and the rest of the world. Incidentally, I did a reading on Freud for this class an hour or so ago and he's probably one of the most interesting people I've ever read. It's going to be a very enlightening course, I'm sure. 

I'll probably have another archival account up tomorrow,

Bill

The Deep Places of the World

Back to my orientation narrative...

Sunday, July 5th

7:00 a.m. Depart for Waitamo caves

Having my biological clock completely restarted afforded me the opportunity to choose when I was going to regularly get up in the morning. Although I'd been training myself to wake up relatively early, a 7:00 departure was still pretty rough. The entire group had been broken up into two groups, and my half departed to the caves on the Magic Bus today. We basically had two options to choose from in regards to cave diving: the wet cave or the dry cave. I got some insider information that the dry cave involved an underground zipline over a gaping abyss. There no longer being no contest between the two, I signed up for the dry caves. It was a solid 2 hour drive from the east side of the country (Rotorua) to the west side (Waitamo). Arriving at the Waitamo caves parking lot, we were shuttled away in groups of 6 or 7 at a time by small volkswagen-esque vehicles. My group, of course, was last. We whittled away the time waiting on the increasingly empty bus by fiddling and jamming on Joe's acoustic guitar, Will playing some Bright Eyes and myself of course whipping out some vintage Who. The last shuttle arrived and a tight squeeze and 20 minutes or so later, we arrived in the middle of what I considered my first real taste of an idyllic New Zealand countryside. It was endless, rolling fields with strange rocks and trees jutting out and making the landscape unique and ever changing. The morning was again rather cold and foggy, and we hiked through the countryside for a good 15 minutes from where our bus stopped. I was informed that the land was rented by this tourist company from a woman who owned the land. The cave was discovered about five years ago and had since been capitalized upon. 

Remember how I said that the New Zealand tourist industry was really, really smart? You'll notice that there's a conspicuous absence of many pictures on this post. That's because the cave people made you leave your cameras and personal belongings in lockers before you left due to "liability reasons". Conveniently, however, they did supply special camera shots of you and you friends for only 15 dollars a piece. Genius. I grabbed some great shots on the small bus shuttle journeying to and from the caves, though. The sun was on its way up and the sky was parting, and every time I looked up there was a dove flying through a sunny crack in the clouds. It was just ridiculous.

Note the rainbow. Not to brag.

This may or may not have been the Garden of Eden.

It's at this point that I'll have to rely on some descriptive language to get a proper image in your heads, because I have no photos. After journeying on foot through this absolutely absurdedly beautiful landscape, we came upon a swiftly declining slope. All of the hills around us also slanted downward gradually, meeting at one spot on the bottom of the small grassy basin. At the center of this spot stood a single small tree, craned over and drooping its green leaves as if it were hiding something. The root of the tree was hollowed out. Upon approaching the tree, it became apparent that its base shielded a foundation of rock that lead down into an unknown abyss. To my complete surprise, we had arrived at the Waitamo caves. 

After a bit of waiting and a solid amount of training and equipment exercises that wouldn't be too entertaining to recount, I found myself journeying underneath the tree and hooking myself onto the supports. I was about to cave dive. "Now," said the instructor, "the drop is shaped like an hour glass; you'll find it open for a while, but then you'll have to squeeze your way through the middle. Don't Panic, just shimmy your way through." Have you ever seen a film called "The Descent"? I have, and it certainly didn't help my first diving experience. I did feel pretty cool as I put my life in the hands of a rope support system and slowly lowered myself down, releasing small bits of the rope at a time. I turned my helmet light on and looked around me. Everything was wet and quiet, and all I could hear was the friction of my rope gliding against my hand as I methodically released it bit by bit. The guy wasn't kidding when he said the middle was shaped like an hour glass, and I learned (and have learned in several different instances since I've arrived here) that the instruction "Don't Panic" is a sure sign that you will panic, at least in the initial stages of the journey. To be honest, yes, a small bit of panic crept into my throat as I found myself wedged between two narrow rocks hanging in midair in complete darkness 150 feet beneath the earth. Having never done this before, I think overall I probably didn't look as cool as I would have liked to, as it took me a solid couple of minutes to navigate my way down, awkwardly bump into as many rocks and walls as possible, finally squeeze through the narrow part, and finally touch down and send my rope back up. That being said, I THOUGHT I looked pretty cool until the instructor came down after all of us and completed the drop in a total of about ten seconds, bouncing off the walls with his feet and looking like some awesome hybrid of Indiana Jones and Ethan Hunt. It was then that I realized I could have looked cooler. Lesson learned.

So, the depths of the earth. Truth be told, it's everything it's cracked up to be. The first course of action upon fully gathering in the caverns was to turn everyone's lights off and experience the darkness. I really can't explicate upon this idea enough: it was very, very dark. It was so dark that that darkness itself felt like a physical force that was forcing itself upon me. I couldn't see my nose in front of me and found myself questioning whether or not I did, in fact, exist at that moment in time. I had never experienced an absolute darkness of that sort before, and it was certainly another new experience for me. Moving on through the caverns, I found the terrain to be increasingly difficult and treacherous to navigate. The cavern would go from loose rocked, slippery terrain to water-logged holes in the ground. The walls looked like a rainfall frozen in time; nothing moved but it always looked to be in a state of in-between motion. This was due, I soon learned, to the fact that all of these walls, stalactites and stalagmites (which I learned the difference between, by the way) WERE in fact in the process of growing. Unfortunately, my limited human perception could not register this growth as it was occurring at a rate of 1 cm every hundred years. The water drips through the ground, collects small amounts of calcium from the rocks on their way down, and then deposit the calcium on the walls and pillars before they drip into the ground. I learned all of this AFTER I had sneakily hidden a small piece of cool looking cave rock into my pants, and realized that the smuggling would all be in vain: anything taken out of the cave turns to dust, a chalk-like calcium deposit disintegrated due to lack of moisture that only the caves can provide. Bummed, I dropped the rock casually by my side. Next time, Gadget. Next time.

After a quick snack break (which was great, by the way, because I was in fact quite hungry at this point), we proceeded onto the zipline. The zipline was very long and was situated above an indeterminate amount of the unequivocal darkness that I had spoken of before. Going over the abyss sent strange, powerful shocks (probably of adrenaline) through my limbs and I looked down the entire time. It added to the adventurous feeling of it. There was quite literally nothing there, but I almost felt that if I was to fall, the darkness would catch me; it was that thick. Ziplining to the other side, the guides began to rattle off their nicknames and personal interpretations (kermit the frog, horse carousel, John Cusack) of various unique rock structures high up in the ceilings and embedded in the walls. This drove home to me that these two men had been working here for far too long and should perhaps, at least for a while, find a different line of profession. For their sake, not mine. 

After the zipline it was a short, steep ascent up what the guides called "probably the most interesting structure of all" (it was an iron staircase). On the way up through the tunnel, we were told to observe the giant Weta bugs on the walls. For those of you unaware, the Weta is basically a beetle on steroids native only to New Zealand. They have been able to grow this large due to the lack of predators native to the country. So Wetas are about the size of my hand and allegedly extremely aggressive. Looking onto the walls and seeing these big black monsters about five inches from my face was an experience enough, but I was even happier when the guides warned us (after we had shone our lights on them for a solid minute) not to shine our lights in their eyes for too long because they're aggressive and prone to pounce and attack anything that annoys them, namely light. We proceeded to scurry up the ladder and found ourselves being forced into a very, very small cubicle without any prior explanation.  After forcing about ten of us into this small, hollowed out wooden cylinder, the guide closed the door behind us. At this point, we had still not been informed as to what in the name of God we were doing in this thing. Now, I'm not the most claustrophobic person, but I think it's fair to say I had a very mini panic attack from the combination of being underground this whole time, being trapped in this small space with ten other people, and having been thinking about The Descent for the last hour and a half subconsciously. After about ten seconds, the opposite side of the cubicle was opened and we breathed fresh air. We had been inside of an airlock. That's all fair and all, but I would've liked some prior warning. Not to be picky.

The walk back up through the lush valleys to the shuttle was equally as scenic and beautiful, and the sun had decided to come out. We were given mass amounts of pizza before we got on the bus. However, were the lucky group to be chosen last, so we were informed that "no rush, but everyone's waiting on the bus for you. no rush, though." We were very, very hungry and decided to take our precious time. It was my first exposure to New Zealand pizza and my first impressions still stick with me now: New Zealanders put a lot of toppings on their pizzas. I'm talking like 10+. There is no conception of a "cheese" pizza here. I wasn't complaining though, because all of the toppings were amazing and it was served on an almost unleavened bread that tasted delicious. Sure, some of the concepts and ingredients were different, but upon further many slices and much contention, I concluded that "the song remains the same". That's how a lot of things are here in New Zealand: same key ideas but with different ingredients. On the Magic Bus ride back to Kiwipaka, we stopped for a few minutes to take a group photo outside of an information station. I'm on the far left, looking quite smashing.

After that, we made one more mass requested pit stop to observe a beautiful man-made dam and bridge built inside of it. Here, finally, is a bit more multimedia to satisfy your visual needs.

I decided on the spot that pictures couldn't appropriately capture the tone and beauty of this river, so I took a video. Enjoy.

Most of us slept on the ride home, the caves were physically exhausting and certainly took a toll. We got back to Kiwipaka and were given a "free night" to ourselves, basically meaning that they didn't have to feed us. Smart. This had been our last full day at orientation. I had a great experience but was more than ready to finally get on the puddle jumper and get to Wellington, my school, and a blessed empty room all to myself. We had not gotten a minute to breathe since we got off the plane, and I for one just wanted to be able to sit down in a quiet room, take a deep breath, and let my thoughts catch up with me. Departure time was 12:55 p.m. out of Rotorua airport, and I was excited to finish the final leg of my journey.