The Wild West coast

We actually managed to get up early to drive to the west coast this morning. Until we came a cropper.

The speed bumps were so aggressive for our very, very heavy car so I decided to cut around one over the grass, saving the suspension. 

There were big rocks in the grass! 

With a huge bang we were grounded! 

With the help of a gang of locals we managed to lift up one side of the car so Jana could push the stone out. 

No major damage, just a snapped mudflap and dented underside.

The car (newly christened Mr Ben) held up ok and we got to a campsite in punaki where we got a cabin for a really good price.

The young girl in the office tried to charge us an extra $20 for having a fourth person so I just told her there was three of us, no harm done!

Until checkout the next morning. 

A very angry Chuck Noris looking man started screaming and shouting at me when I dropped the key off that there were four of us. I played dumb and let him frog march me back to the cabin. Luckily enough only Joe and Charlie were there so he backed down and went away. This meant Jana had to run away down the road for us to pick up later!

After this exciting escapade we went to check out the pancake rocks and the Truman track.

The Able Tasman Adventure

After three days of discussion we finally decided how we were going to explore the Able Tasman national park. By sea!

We collected our two man kayaks early yesterday morning and set out on the open seas under blue skys. Less than five minuets later it was pissing it down with heavy rain..!

It felt like a real wilderness adventure, secretly I loved it. With the rain and spray in our faces we dug deep and pushed on. Sailing past amazing rock formations, cliff faces and green forest.

We stopped at twoish for a break on a beach and miraculously the clouds parted and the sun shone just long enough for us to dry all our clothes on a fence nearby. We had our cheese sandwiches and off we went.

A few hours of leasurely kayaking later and we arrived at bark bay. After setting up camp we joined the other campers for a really fun night around the fire. 

I tried to chop some wood with a big axe. It's actually a lot harder than it looks! I was terrified of chopping into one of my feet if I missed the log! Joe stepped up with no fear, hit the side of the log and nearly knocked his own block off as a piece of wood came flying out at him.

Late at night, under cover of darkness we followed a young kiwi couple into the woods in search of glow worms. As we passed other campers word spread of our expedition and we ended up with nearly the whole site in our convoy.

This morning we woke a little late, 10am. We spent a lot of time deciding wether to go to the marine reserve or to just kayak slowly back south. After two minuets Jana and I realised our arms were actually really tired, but how to tell the others we didn't want to go to the marine reserve without looking puniy and pathetic..?

We took the weakling option but luckily they felt the same. We kayaked through the amazing weather, the water like a mill pond. Stopped at a secluded beach where Joe and I tried to do some circus gymnastics. We then hopped back on the water and around Adele Island where we found a mummy seal sunning herself on the rocks while her four pups frolicked in the water around our kayaks. I was very jelouse that one actually climbed on a French couples kayak near us.

It got a lot less fun after the amazing seal experiance.

The wind picked right up and Jana and I had to really battle head on against the wind all the way back to port. It was soo windy at one point we needed to paddle hard ten strokes just to move a foot!

Eventually we got back. But Joe and Charlie didn't! They went to the wrong beach so we had to wait to cheer them in.

A rainy welcome to the South Island

I finally arrived in Picton after a very rocky ferry journey from Wellington yesterday at one am. The ferry was good. I was very pleased as I just managed not to vomit everywhere. I was also very confused when we were offered ice cubes for sea sickness. Random but the distraction seemed to do the trick.

After sleeping in the car for a few hours I drove the very windy road to Nelson. I had a bit of a wander round and found Jana, Joe, and Charlie who had gone over a few days before me.

Later that afternoon we drove towards Tanaka. We got pretty close. But ended up getting turned around due to meter deep flooding on the road ahead. So we turned tail and drove back to Motueka.

Today we decided on a two day Abel Tasman kayak trip for the next few days. Joe Charlie and I went to the split apple rock and then walked a few hours along the track, which was beautiful. The best bit was giving charlie a great Shag, Marry or Cruise question. She was given three guys with the theme of 90's Saturday night telly and had to pick one to marry, one for a night of passion and one to cruise with on a small ship for a year. Dale Winton, Jim Davidson, Noel Edmonds.

All that matters is that Charlie ended up sleeping with Jim Davidson who entered the bedroom singing "I'm gunna be snookering you, snookering you tonight." While john Virgo would stand in the corner and wait for his chance to make a trick shot.

The Hurricanes

The weekend before starting for the hurricanes was pretty good.

Jana, Charlie and I went to the Wellington Market. It was a very girly arts and crafts affair, so not really for me. I did however find a stool selling New Zealand green stone. As Joe had lost his I decided to buy a piece and make it into a necklace myself which I hope he likes.

Joe and I also went to Weta Caves, a production studio where The Lord of the rings, Avatar, district 9 and the Narnia special effects and props were made. The tour of the workshop and behind the scenes video were awesome. It's amazing how much work goes into the simplistic of props.

That evening I went to Ben's party which was pretty cool, I played some terrible beer pong as usual.

Sunday was a chill day before Monday, my big day.

The rugby experiance was really great.

I spent loads of time learning from their physio's and interacting and treating a few of the players. In my shining moment when Conrad Smith asked me to strap his wrist. One of the easiest things one can possibly do. I lost my cool and forgot everything about physio and probably wouldn't have remembered my own name if he asked me! Clearly didn't do a bad job as he didn't mind me doing it at every session after.

I also had a bit of a shock on the third day when the guy I had hung out with the most turned out to be Cory Jane! I, along with everyone else call him CJ and I didn't put two and two together as he looks different with a goatee!

Other highlights include being in two 'behind the scenes' videos (granted I'm in about one second between them). Also going down pitch side for the training session and media event inside the West PAC stadium.

At the end of it I got offered a job with an affiliated clinic and some work with the youth teams. 

During my evenings I started watching the new Sherlock Holmes show. Really enjoyed it, I would go as far to say it's the new Jonathan Creek.

I was also leant Brian Mulligans text book so I read the entire book one evening!

I also met up with Sarah (from the library) on Wednesday. We went to a gig which was really good even though the heavily tattooed female owner walked around the bar for a while pretending to be an aeroplane! Then I walked her home and tried to dig myself out of the hole that was that even though I barley know her, I made a passionate comment about how perfect my new gloves are if you were a murder. Didn't go down well late at night in a dark, quiet strange city. Shocker.

On my last day in Wellington I hit the gym before finding out my ferry was to be delayed from 1:30pm to 9:15pm. Fun times. I made the most out of it by visiting the City and Sea museum and playing air drums in silence for nearly two hours with my headphones in. In the car. Whilst other passengers walked past either scared or bemused.

Wellington

After driving back to rainy Wellington I had a very productive few days!

Not only was my license to practice turned down, I wrote an essay to appeal it in the library where I met Sarah, a Canadian girl working on her CV. We later went to a comedy club. We were the only two people in the audience who weren't the performers! As a result we were involved with nearly every comedians set! 

At one point I had to get up on stage and have a look at the standups foot!

The next day I handed in my essay, had a walk around town, visited the film archive. Which annoyed me as it was typed as "THe FILm aRCHIVe" but all the letters the same size. Does basic grammar cost extra?

I watched some 1930's and 50's rugby, which was brutal, massive non wrap around hits flying everywhere. Then I watched an old movie called 'The Silent One' a very enjoyable story about a deaf mute living in a Maori tribe. And then I'm pretty sure I did some other utterly hilarious stuff with even more hilarious consequences leading to awkward situations and quiet the pullava. But I don't remember right now so I'll move on.

The very next day I got word that I was being approved my license to practice, and that I have an awesome job waiting for me in Nelson! Happy days!

I met up with Sarah again and visited the national museum before having a night out with team CrossBreeze and some other assorted Germans. To cut a long story short, Joe and I branded ourselves the Yeastie boys, we drank a lot of strong beer and then sang some Kareoke! 

The next day was a bit of a wright off except that I met up for some beers with Hendrik my old G adventures guide which was fun. I taught all the girls lots of swear words in German.

The road to Capital City

Without looking at the distance we decided to try and drive straight from Te Kuiti to Wellington. Leaving at about 4pm.

Not the best idea. 

We ended up driving on a cliff side road in the pitch darkness around hair pin bends. Eventually I admitted defeat and we found a campsite near Whonganui. I then tried to be cheeky and tell the lady there was only two of us to decrease our price. That plan when down smoothly, for all of five minuets when she came out to show us to our pitch.

I came out hissing urgently at Joe and Charlie to roll out of the far side of the car and creep into a bush, I'd collect them later.

Unfortunately after Jana and I had left, the woman's husband saw some people in the bushes. He then went on to explore, leaving Joe and Charlie a fantastic tale about their exploits when I came to find them hiding in a small shrub.

The next day we drove on to Wellington. I had a nice walk around the bay and then we all met up with Ben Rodgers. I played rugby with Ben at BHASVIC and it was good to see him.

We later had a walk around the botanical gardens where some stupid children were playing so we couldn't go on the awesome spinning jungle gym.

On the Friday we climbed back into the car and went to try and do a Lord of the Rings tour of filming locations. We found Rivendale, and were disappointed by this distinctly average field. We couldn't even find helms deep or isengard! We'll never find the hobbits!

On our second spectacularly sunny day camping near Rivendale Joe and I went to run the old steam train rail path. Again we were disappointed with the scenery around Wellington but we had a lot of fun anyway. 

The most fun was our'short cut' home.

We jumped a fence, cutting through a farmers field to get back to the road.

From our vantage point, on the rail path, it looked like an easy stroll through the farm land so we set off. First up we encountered a field of 80% cow pat. Agilely we nipped between and around the big pooy pancakes to a thin metal fence. Is it electric??? I braced myself and slapped the bugger. With my hair not on end we smiled and carried on. Next was the marsh. That was fun, nearly swallowing my shoe! Then we had to avoid a line of vision of the farmers house and negotiate the dense thorny thickets. After 15 minuets we decided to head back thought the marsh land and round into a paddock. From here it was a straight shot to the cow shed, down the path and away to victory. Just a 10 foot barbed fence to negotiate, which we took in our stride and out onto the road. 

Such a shame we later found out that we only cut out about 800m!

The worst part of the day, by far, was when Joe went for a pee in the bushes. I happened to be in running shorts and no shirt, stood alone on the corner of a main road with cars driving past.

I've never felt like more of a rent boy in my entire life!

100 meters under ground

Today we went to the Waitomo caves for some underground adventuring!

What an amazing day! After we slipped into our, really cool, wetsuits and Joe and I had finished pretending to be action man. We abseiled down into the cave system.

Abseiling was one of the most terrifying things I have done. Much worse than sky diving. As I knew that the only thing separating me from crashing 40 foot into a rock floor was me not messing up. No guide, no saftey measure. Just me swinging about on a bit of rope.

I think the woman sending us down the hole realised I was scared. Mainly as I took about 3 attempts and kept doing a weird squat thing to stay standing on the platform.

Once down we I instantly started to enjoy the mysterious caves. We had some hot chocolate and flapjack before progressing into the underground river floating through on inflatable rings. We drifted through the cool cave system surrounded by dazzling glow worms giving the caverns and tunnels a magnificent ambiance. After some floating, wading and swimming we climbed up the faces of some underground waterfalls and through some tiny intestine like tunnels. We finished with some more river wadeing and took in the amazing glow worms. Which, interestingly are actually maggots with poo that glows through there abdomens. These maggots turn into flys, that have no mouths. So live for three days until they starve to death. In that time they fornicate for about 90% of the time!

From Waitomo we drove as far as we could and camped overnight before driving all day the next day. Bringing us to sunny Wellington!

The running of the sheep!

I woke early this morning with adrenaline pumping through my veins. Giddy with a mixture of excitement, anticipation and terror. I readied myself for the intisity that was I store for the day. A running of the fiercest of all the farmyard animals.

The sheep.

I wandered down the Main Street of Te Kuiti while Joe and Jana Prepared with a run (clearly to practice Incase a rouge sheep jumped the barricades and hell brakes loose) and a lie in (clearly to conserve energy) respectively. They were clearly taking the event as seriously as I was.

I visited a couple of stalls up and down the high street before watching a BBQ demenstration and also a performance of the Big Muffin Serious Band. They were very silly but actually very entertaining. Joe and Jana joined me for a couple more acts and some tasty Samoan food.

Then we got our spots close to the action.

The wolly monsters ran down the street in droves, you could almost see the fire in their eyes as the power of there hooves struck terror into the hearts of the small children. The children did what they could to steady themselves. Some of them were trying to overcome their anxiety -very convincingly- with laughter and smiles. But I could tell behind of this facad of joviality the demonic ewes where rapping at their very souls. 

Some people were holding their hands out in obvious terror. Clearly attempting to keep the sheep at arms length as they rampaged down the street, as hulking dogs tried to keep these blood thirsty creatures under control. 

Later that evening we attended the New Zealand sheep sheering finals. It was a baaariliant event (ha haa!).

It was actually really good fun and very entertaining. We saw several different events. From speed sheering, breed variety sheering, wool packing, youth sheering and quality sheering jobs.

The prime minister was in attendance and I met, accidentally, the president of the New Zealand sheep sheering association. I shook his hand and stole the person who he was talking to (the local physio) who went on to offer me a job!

Although the sheering was good, some of the speeches were a bit... Wooly... (He hee!). But the laser show before the men's open final was honestly excellent and one of the best I've ever seen. 

The standard of sheerers was top quality. It was a close shave who would win at times (ok that's a bit ropey I can do better).

Some of the younger contestants were initially a bit sheepish (brilliant) but I'm sure if they can ram in enough practice they can beat the old goats at there own game.

Overall the sheer spectacle was a cut above any other sheep tournament I have been too. (HA!)

We had such a great time, the event was very well put together and well run. 

After the finals and prize givings we went home to (last one I promise) .... Count some sheep...

Tongariro northern circuit

Off we went to explore middle earth!

We started the circuit from the desert an hour south of the circuit circling mount doom from lord of the rings. Partly as this would give us an easy first and last day. But partly because I missed the turning to the recommended start point and didn't realise until we were an hour into the desert.

Anyway, we hiked up through the desert scrubland, in and out of dry river beds and over old magma fields. After four hours of walking we arrived at the campground on a plateau of mount tongariro, around 2000ft above sea level. 60km ph winds stopped us from using the exposed official campsite. Instead we opted for a small spot I found right on the cliff face, shielding us from the worst of the wind. It was a beautiful view across a gorge of a waterfall. Even better at night when the moon and stars blazed like spotlit diamonds in the velvet blue night sky.

It was however bloody freezing!

The following day we hiked 7 hours chatting mainly about kids tv shows and saw some of the most beautiful views of the crossing including the turquoise sulphur lakes and the red volcanic craters.

We eventually arrived in mongipopo hut to find it fully booked. Jana decided to take the last remaining spot inside the hut, as she couldn't deal with the cold as well as Joe and I. We hiked back towards mount doom and set up camp in a crater in a magma field. We enjoyed a can of soup on the craters lip as the sun went down over the alien like landscape.

That night I mistook Joe for a backpack and tried resting my legs against him. He took it comically badly and broke out with "at least spoon me properly! I'm not garbage!" As he rolled away and we both broke down in laughter.

I also woke up drowning at one point as I had slept with my waterproof coats hood up. Leading to me filling it with saliva and inhaling some through my nose!

After this fun filled evening Joe and I left to scale Mount Doom. As our diet had been about 98% oats for three days neither of our bowls were making pleasant discharges. Leading to the greatest Lord of the rings quote ever!

Joe came hobbling out of the toilets next to Mount Doom to a crowd of people queuing to enter and said "you can't walk into Mordor! The air itself is poison!" I nearly died.

After this we climbed the sheer cliffs of the mountain in pretty good time. I would say about an hour of rapid climbing, hands and feet up the igneous rock face. We pissed around at the top taking in some of the un believable views before sliding back down the ashen side of the volcano.

After Joe got lost in the magma fields trying to take a short cut to our tent, we picked up Jana and continued our hike to Whakapapa (hilariously pronounced 'fuck a papa'). This was the most challenging section for me as we approached 8 hours of solid hiking including a rapid volcano climb. We finally made it though. We treated ourselves to a slap up restraunt meal and a nice hot shower.

The final day was a lovley, moderately flat walk through the grasslands with the epic Mount Tongariro and Volcanic Mount Doom at either flank. We spent the day enjoying the views of the lakes, streams and mountains discussing what super hero powers we would like and why.

I decided I would like super memory. So I could learn anything on being shown or told once becoming an expert straight away. That or teleportation, as I could teleport high in the air with a hanglider or wing suit an essentially fly, or more accurately fall with style.

The leap of faith

After spending a night at a beautiful campsite on the banks of the Waikato river. 

I stepped on a stick in the middle of the night having a wee. It hurt a lot.

After departing the campsite we had a bit of a hike down the river past the huka falls to a point where a  natural hot water sprink met the mighty Waikato and creates a nice warm area we had a bit of a bath.

Joe, Jana and I drove down to Taupo.

20 minuets later I was in a plane at 15000 feet in a small airplane strapped to the groin of a man called Andy with big holes in his earlobes. 

I was absoloulty fine until Jana was essentially thrown from the plane.

As we jumped out we did a backflip and the exhilaration really started. The wind blasting my face as I looked across the vivid blue lake meeting the sky in the distance parted by a thin band of distant mountains.

From this hight the sky was a continuum of different hues of blue. 

The wind rushed my face and filled my cheeks like a fat man out of a car window. As I dribbled everywhere! -I have to admit this as it has been caught clearly on the video-.

As we approached the earth the parachute was pulled and I was given the handles to steer us down to safty. With a big yank on the left pulley we pulled into tight spirals, creating many gs of force as we plumited to the ground. It was amazing fun, and such a rush! Andy however shortly took back the reigns and plopped us down into a grassy field on our bottoms.

As soon as he unclipped  me I ran off and telly tubby bumped Joe too hard so we both fell over and had a group hug with Jana.

To celebrate surviving a 15000 foot fall out of a moving aircraft we went out on the town when we got back. We played some drinking games with some German girls and Brazilian guys we met and were then joined by three brits; Chris, Jenny and Annie for some outrageous dancing and general fun having! Jana got a bit aggressive at one point as some snobby girls were shooting at me and Joes moves so Jana flipped them the bird. It was very funny but I guess you had to be there.

It took us two full days to recover from this much fun. We were finally pulled out of the hostel by Jenny, Chris and Annie as we joined them on a great sailing boat cruise of lake Taupo. It was the most perfect weather. So many vivid shades of blue in the water and sky. We visited the famous Maori carvings and had a refreshing swim.

The cruise was so good we went back out again on a second round!

A more successful surfing experiance.

From Mata Mata and the waterfall we went west to Raglan for some surfing.

It was wholly more successful than my previous attempt at the coromandel. By the end of my two days I was down to a reasonable sized long board and was standing up on nearly every attempt!

Away from the beach we attached ourselves to a school group who pitied us and gave us some free meals!

After a few days of surfing we hopped back in the car taupo bound!