At last Aquacave!

I finally got an evening to go for a bit of an explore, so I called an acquaintance I had not met up with before and he agreed, himself and a friend would like to come have a bit of a photo session in a drain called Toadie.

Being super keen, I ended up being ridiculously early! and I ended up wandering around the city for several hours until we were due to meet.

I headed off to Toadie first, just for fun. It runs for just under 1.5km, under a section of the city that is not heavily populated. It has a nice fairly high ladder entry and I thought it would be a comfortable no fuss entry for us to go take some photos. Also neither of my companions had gotten round to having a look in Toadie yet, so it seemed perfect!

After having a look at the cage and generally poking round spotting manholes that looked like they would provide a nice alternate entry or exit. I headed back towards the city to wander around checking out some spots while I waited. It ended up being just over 12km of exploring about by the time I was due to head back to Toadie's entrance and my legs were getting a tad tired!

I saw some interesting manholes and gutters and connected a few dots in my head, looked down some grates on roads and saw a nice large brick drain in the depths below. Made some mental notes to add to my maps when I got home and was just about good and ready to get cracking already!

After waiting in the dark near Toadie for about 20 minutes for the security car to leave the spot we were supposed to meet at, it occurred to me that it was a rather odd spot for the chap to being having midnight liaisons with another character who left a few minutes later. I suspect Mr Security was topping up his supply of wacky weed while on his night shift.

NIOU and CT arrived and we all took a walk to the entry ladder. They had been there before, just not in and we decided to have a look at Aquacave instead and come back another night.

This suited me fine as I had yet to find an entrance to Aquacave and it had always looked like a really great drain.

We drove off and parked about 5 meters from where I had been scouting around earlier in the evening only to turned back by a group of not so friendly looking locals sniffing paint in the doorway of a building just up the road. Deciding this was not the night to get mugged and loose my new camera, I scurried off in the opposite direction, hoping they scent of my fear wasn't to palpable in the air as to draw them from their cave.

We all descended into Aquacave down short ladder and I found myself immersed in the darkness with that damp earth aroma all around. Torches flickered on and we had some short banter on touch envy before NIOU and CT who had been here before, led the way to the more interesting brick and rock sections of the drain and out of the RCP area.

On the way there I saw some nice signatures of folks gone before, including one from Predator from back in 1999 :)

After a short walk and some clumsy clambering over some obstacles we skirted some water and rounded a corner to see Aquacave proper in all it's lovely brick and rock goodness.

Cameras and tripods popped out everywhere and the three of us disappeared to some likely spots for photographs. Silence descended except for the sound of shutters flashlight clicks and strobes.

The occasional yelp as someone misjudged inthe dark and went foot first into the water, cursing and muttering, only to descend back to silence.

At one point a pair of beady red rat eyes started advancing down the drain towards me, I scurried back to my camera and checked again and he was gone. Hopefully nowhere near me.

Eventually the silence ended after an indeterminate amount of time I would guess at 40 minutes. We all agreed it was we had grabbed some shots and it was time to get out. I had no idea what sort of shots I had got, and was basically just tooling around with flashlights and colored filters for 40 minutes!

As we went back to the city my comrades were very keen to show me an underground haunt that had not graf and was in a busy part of town and only known to them. It sounded great, but I was a little apprehensive, being the sort to quit while I am ahead and all.

It wasn't to be this night however as a young man had decided to linger in out entryway smoking and chatting on his mobile.

Instead 7 Eleven and some conversation about expeditions run and feats accomplished, all of which were most admirable.

I headed to the station and NIOU and CT headed home, it was a great night and in great company!