Canyoning

I love those days where you just can’t stop smiling. Let me introduce you to an activity called canyoning, something I’m sure many of you have never heard of before. Microsoft Word doesn’t even recognize the word ‘canyoning’ as a real word, but I can assure you it is, or at least it is over here in New Zealand.

Here is how the internet defines canyoning:

canyoning
— n
	the sport of travelling down a river situated in a canyon by avariety of means  including scrambling, floating, swimming, and abseiling

On Saturday March 21^st, I had the absolute pleasure in partaking in this activity. With Awol Adventures, myself and a few other friends traveled from Auckland to the western coast of the north island to a place called Piha. Here a spectacular adventure was about to begin.

Now in order to partake in canyoning one must be wearing the finest of clothing. Everyone is our group got equipped with the most attractive and form fitting wet suits possible (I really would hope that everyone can pick up on my sarcasm). Once we were all geared up it was off to the mountain.

Before we began our hike our guide had set up two roped attached to posts to help us get a little practice in and a feel for what abseiling actually is. To further add to the beauty of our clothing he gave each of us harnesses that made us look like we had baboon butts as well. To abseil one would put the rope inside the harness, and then with one hand hold the tail end backwards behind them. Now when walking backwards if you are falling, you pull the rope tightly behind you and the way in which the rope is placed in the harness will naturally stop your fall. Everyone also worked as backup belayers at the ends of each rope to pull it tightly in case the person they were spotting was falling. After all our practice we were pretty much pro and ready to take on the waterfalls.

Hiking up a mountain in a hot and sticky wet suit is really not that much fun, but the fun we were about to have was certainly worth it. Taking those first steps over the side of the cliff to walk backwards down the waterfalls that we did was incredibly exhilarating. It was such an adrenaline rush. Besides abseiling down these waterfalls we also scaled the side of rock cliffs, climbed through caves filled with water, and even jumped off some ledges into water.

I think I have a new hobby .