Hold your breath

We woke up to a cold wet morning, rain was coming down in streams and we didn't feel like getting up. We had to however because today was going to be a busy day, we had two dives planned and they promised to be exhausting. After some quick breakfast we headed up to the dive-shop and after all the gear was loaded into the van we went to pick up the third guy. After he was on-board it was about 40 minutes to the first dive-site; a bridge that got flooded as the lake rose in water level. The water was cold, but fortunately Lance and Simone had extremely good gear and as soon as the water in my suit had warmed up you didn't notice it at all.
After we had descended to the bridge, which was at about 10m deep, we swam in between the steel fencing across what would have been the deck of the bridge. The light shining through the steel structure gave it a very eerie glow. After we swam the entire lenght of the bridge we descended along one of it's stone pillars before swimming underneath the bridge and finally ascending through the steel structure. After surfacing and walking back to the car (which was very tiring with all our gear still on) we drove to the next dive site, which would take us about another hour.
This time we would dive into a fast flowing river and let the current take us downstream while we tried to avoid the numerous rocks scattered all over the bottom. We jumped in the water in a small inlet where there was virtually no current before swimming to the center of the river to let the current take us. The first few seconds, as the current grabbed hold and you knew you had no choice but to go along with it, were quite scary. We started to pick up speed fast now and as Lance led us to the center of the river it felt like all our furious finning wasn't helping at all. The rocks we encountered ranged from small to the size of a car and sometimes it took a lot of effort to go around them. At first Mattieux (the third guy) was behind Lance, followed by me and then jasper, but as we progressed along the river I found myself floating faster than Matt and there was no way I could stop or slow myself down. After a few desperate attempts at changing course and slowing down I collided with Matt, the current pushing me straight into him and then slowly over him. After seeing that he made no effort to speed up I decided to just go past him and to follow Lance directly. Lance was taking a lot of pictures and didn't notice two large rocks that were approaching fast, they were too big and too shallow to swim over comfortably so we were forced to bunny hop over them, pushing ourselves out of the water just slightly. Eventually we reached a whirlpool in the river where the water was deeper and we swiftly descended as the ground fell to about 8 meters, trying to stay out of the circling water as much as possible. Once we got to the bottom the water was relatively calm and we sat there for a few minutes looking at the trout that was swimming around us before continueing. After we got through the wildest part of the river where there were some very shallow white water rapids we ascended to the surface to catch our breath. When we descended again we passed through a relatively calm part of the river and we all had fun floating upside down and on our backs. A few minutes later we arrived at the exit point of the river and walked back to the car. When we arrived back in Queenstown we had a beer with Lance and Simone. We were dead tired.

http://s713.photobucket.com/albums/ww138/lingonlas/Nz%20maart%2013/