First Few Days

5 full days in New Zealand now, went Kayaking at the weekend to the Buller river near Murchison. There wasn’t that much water arround according to the locals, but compared to the UK the rivers were full, you can float down and not hit a single rock if you don’t want to, Sweet. Nothing to hard though, just a gental warm up, to try and get my muscles working again.

On the way back to Christchurch we stopped off to do a 20 meter section of river, 20 meters along, 30 foot down,Maruia falls classic park ‘n’ huck.

Ariki falls

Got myself a car today, $320 2 litre auto, Mazda 626 , came with a tent pots and pans and pillows etc, Bonza. Hoping to head to the Coast for some harder runs this week, and go to BullerFest at the weekend, Extreme race, big air comp and big ass party.

27th Feb - Rangitata Gorge

Ben (my new Kiwi friend, who can’t pronounce his vowels properly, but I’m teaching him), bunked the day off uni to go paddling with me, something non of us would do! So we drove to the Rangitata gorge, a medium volume 4-4+ near Christchurch, a bit like the Amot gorge. First mission is to lower you boat and yourself down a 80 foot gorge cliff thing, then paddle upstream to the first rapid, portage it get back in and continue up stream! repeat 4 times, then walk out of the gorge and right arround the hard rapids, still going up stream, and get in above them! mission! But well worth it. First rapid: Roosters Tail (maybe 4+) hardest on the run, good warm up hey, it has a funny buffer cushion wave thing, that either subs you out or screws you over some other way, near the top. Then a nasty hole, but with plenty of room to avoid river right. First go, straight into the buffer wave, front loop into it, upside down, roll up, backwards, look round, nasty hole, shit, paddle river right, go through hole, hole greens out, phew! next time I cleaned it more luck than judgement. Rest of the river is similar but less pushy loads of lines all good, one nice play wave.Get to the bottom of the gorge walk back up do it all again. Camera battery was flat so no photos I’m afraid.

28th Feb - Maori Gorge Horenui River (Solo run)

No one to paddle with yesterday, so had to go it alone. The Horenui was about 1.5-2 hrs outside of Christchurch, a good outing for my aged motor, and she performed amicably. Probably one of the most scenic runs I have ever done, wasn’t quite sure what to expect in the gorge but it turned out to be very easy no more than grade 3 mostly 2. Still, worth it for the experience of gorge paddling on my own, quite a solitary feeling being the only person on a river, would have been scary if there had been any “unscoutable, unporageable, unrunnable rapids with the water levels rising,” but there weren’t.

The Golden Goddess

Maori gorge

Solitary confinement

Buller Fest - Murchison - 2-4th March

Buller fest , extreme race Friday, Slalom Saturday, Big Air comp Sunday, sun shining all weekend, lots of beer consumed, lots of Rega and New Zealand drum ‘n’ base listended to. Story of the weekend was my new friend Andrew from Canada taking a swim on Ariki falls, ask Joe for a story about his!, Andrew dropped in a little off line, got recirced into the drop swam and went down… equalised the pressure in his ears like a diver would, twice on the way down, found himself with rocks all around pushed off them into the flow and went down further, equalised again. Found the bottom, more rocks, starts to swim upwards… meanwhile on the side we’re wondering where the hell his gone, Bens on the river doing the same, 15 seconds pass since Andrew and his boat dissapeared, sudenly he surfaces 30 meters down stream with a smile on his face pleased to still be alive. He recons that the river must be a good 6 to 8 meters deep and the under-cut goes no worries!

Ben Running Ariki, Andrews line was a little further right

West Coast 11 March

Rivers so far on the West coast: Franz Joseph Glacier river, a very cold glacial roaring torent, like the Gyr, only with the addition of floating lumps of ice as big as two basket balls.

Lower Hokitika: First Heli trip, awsome gorges, will have some pictures soon, one grade 4 drop mostly grade 3 +, but NZ grade 3+ on the coast is more like 4 back home. really good fun.

Styks River: total of 4 hours walkling in with creek boats, getting lost loosing Andrew and then scraping down a bony class 3 with no water in it, it sucked, hope to get it higher this week.

Whatoroa: Another Heli run, Its like being back in Nam. Beautiful gorges, 1 portage round nasty undercut with hole feeding it, not pleasant. Some lovely class 3+ and 4 rapids in amazing suroundings, one more possible portage/chicken shoot slightly less wide than my new boat (Blistic Mystic), and near face full of boulder, all good though thats what elbows are for, ouch. All set for some more during the week.

Week 2 on the Coast

After a fairly lazy Sunday, do a bit of Surfing and catching up on rest from Saturday nights Wildfood festival party, I had the good fortune to meet the only other boater on the Coast at the moment, Beth. She hails from Manchester Uni, and has a Van. We spent monday wishing for rain and the rest of the week wishing it would stop.

Totara: Monday night brought lots of rain, and so we headed off to do the Totara, not knowing each others ability and having the less than optimum group number of 2 meant we would have to keep river grades to those counted without the use of the thumb, and definitely without the use of the other hand/feet. The Totara was the perfect run, therefore, at about 3+ and reasonably long, and a drivable shuttle, a rarety on the West coast. It was a bit low to start with but soon picked up a bit and everything went easily, it was reminiscent of a Scottish river, the same peaty colour to the water. I forgot my camera, but I think Beth got some photos, I assure you it was very pretty, with many moss covered gorges and cliffs.

Kakapotahi: Wednesday, another drive in, excellent. One of my favorite rivers so far. After the grade 4 cliff climb to the bottom of the gorge, involving the first use of a throwline that day…

Beths Boat being lowered down the gorge.

… “warm up on 2km of grade 2 water before an innocuous looking gorge, arn’t they all, with a swing bridge,” says the Guide book, “this is the hardest bit of the river with two grade 5 drops, scout/portage on the right. After about 500 meters of grade 2 we found a lovely looking gorge, with no swing bridge, must be part of the grade 2 bit. So I took a picture as Beth paddled in.

I followed, only to discover a rather shaken look/sounding Beth telling me that this is the Grade 5 gorge we were meant to walk/scout. And sure enough a rather server looking and sounding horizon line. Shit. Had the been any higher we would have been forced to run the unsoutable, unportagable, grade 5 infront of us. Fortunately I was able to paddle up stream and out, but only just and not without a fairly large helping of doubt in my mind. Beth however was not able to paddle out, and was very glad to see me appear above her on the top of the gorge. Next came a good lesson in how to Prusik out of a gorge with 1 sling, a knife, a throw bag and 2 carabiners. First: hope that you have a good knowledge of climbing, and know how to prusik out of climbs. Second: cut your only sling into 2 slings, prusik loops. Third: tie boat and paddle to end of throw line. Fourth: using your prior knowledge of climbing ropes using prusik knots, and hoping that your helpful assistant, at the top, has attached his strong looking throwline to a strong looking carabiner, with a strong looking figure of 8 knot, and that strong looking carabiner, is attached to a strong looking tree with a strong looking sling; climb said rope.

Lesson Learned!

The Rest of the run was super good grade 3+/4 boulder gardens, mostly boat scouting, and again lovely moss covered gorges. A day to never forget!
Just below the epic gorge

Lower Toaroha: ‘50 minutes Walk in’, said the guide book, well I guess i might be if you are not towing blistik boats made from the densest material known to man. It was a nice walk though, through rain forrest and calf deep mud. “Calf deep meaning, small cow.”

The run itself was short and sweet, with a great little rapid at the end, that we did about five times each.

Wanganui: No rain that night, so we needed a big river, the Wanganui looked and with the promise of hot pools 2 km from the end we decided to have a bit of an adventure and hike into the unknown. The hike went on and on, eventually just as we were giving up finding anything remotely resembling even a luke-warm pool, we met a man with a big gun. He showed us the way, he mentioned that he had once paddled down the river, with out a spray deck, and ended up swimming most of the way! He must have been pretty cold by the end as its nearly all snow melt water, hats off to him for trying though.

We eventually found the hot pools, and spent sometime relaxing, I was very surprised at how hot they were, and we had to go and cool off in the river after. The rest of the run was fun class 2/3, big and bouncy, if only we’d taken play boats.

We retreated to the pub to play some pool and plan tomorrow, Lower Hokitika then walk up the Witcombe from the confluence, sounded like a good plan and we booked the chopper.

Lower Hokitika and Witcombe (Lower Kakapotahi): Waking up to find a flooded campsite and very low wet rain clouds put a bit of a stop to the plan, The hokey would be in spate and Bruce (the pilot) would not fly.

Back to the Kakapotahi. Every river we crossed was higher than we had seen it. The kakapotahi was the same, excellent! And it was. No mishaps at the gorge this time, and below the grade 3-4 boulder gardens were definitely grade 4 and definitely improved by the extra water. Everything went fine and we both got off thinking that that was probably the hardest thing we should do with just two of us. Fortunately, Ben and Glen were coming across from Christchurch and so we could go harder the next day!

Upper Styx: Ben and Glen arrived on cue on Saturday night. Sunday came and we were up at the crack of dawn, quite literally as we had changed our clocks forwards rather than backwards an hour for winter time (KIWI : Keen If Without Intelligence). Rain had fallen and the upper styx looked good to go, time to get in the helicopter once again!!
The grade 2 warm up ends as soon as it has begun and “arround a corner a horrizon line appears, that you’ll be chasing the rest of the day” is how the guide book describes it. And it is exactly accurate. The gradient is a steadily steep 40m/km, without any flat water to be seen, very tight and very technical and probably the most continuous boulder garden I have ever seen, 6.5km of steep boulder garden to be precise. With some incredible rapids to be had. Part way down was a 600 meter portage round the steep section, some of which has been run, but not in its entirety.

It stayed steep all the way to the normal walk in part, where it got steeper and more intense for a bit and then mellowed (?) out to 4+ then 4 then 3 then 2 then back at the cars. I was shattered!

Sorry about the funny angle, I was in a rather small eddy, clinging to a rather slippery rock, with a horizon line behind me. That bit in the middle is a persons head.

Saying good buy to the South Island

Back the Christchurch, I had 2 days to sort out my car with a warrent of fittness, so I spent the first day sleeping, dossing about and general procrastinating. Did go mountain biking though which again was brilliant.

Murrys bike showed me the merrits of full suspension, oh well maybe I’ll find a cheap one when I get back…

On my bike ride the highlight was finding a Hedgehog crossing the road, so, for Clair, I took this photo. Clair you could come to Christchurch and continue your research here.

A photo for Clair: as you can see the NZ species of Hedgehog is somewhat flatter than its European cousin, something to do with the inverted gravitational pull of the Earth down here I am led to believe…

Car fixed, and now “strickly streat legal”, I set off for the Ferry, taking in KaiKoura on my way, a place where one can go whaling and swimming with doll-things. Having tried to read, and failed, Moby Dick whilst I was in Africa I was quite keen to jump on board a whaling ship and harpoon myself a giant fish. Unfortunately fate was not on my side and it turns out that whaling has been illegal in New Zealand for sometime now.

Boarding the Ferry in Picton, a small picturesque seaside town set in the malbourgh sounds, I was met with an unpleasant smell, reminisant of Ellie’s Vet overalls. Its wasn’t until reaching the upper decks and venturing outside that I was able to spot the culprit, I was sharing my boat with bus loads of Cows, I belive these are the Kiwi experience punters.

A bit dark I know, but you can clearly make out the features of this intrepid Kiwi Experiancer.

The highlight of the trip was the sunset over the sounds.

The North Island

A quick dash up the east coast and inland brought me 30 k’s short of Taihape, then I had to sleep, it was 2 am. The Golden Goddess, as good as she is does not make the best bed, and so sleep was somewhat hard to come by that night.

Next mornign I arrived in River Valley Lodge, a secluded camp site hostle place, visisted by the Kiwi Experience bus, and reminisant of the style of life at the Hairy Lemmon in Uganda. That afternoon I visited Andrew, the cave diver I have previously spoken of, at the Blitz stick factory, just up the road. We all crambed in to Nik “the puker’s” (explain later) Truck and headed up the Rangitika gorge for a spot of paddling. Josh would be impressed with the 50m seal launch to get in. The river was cool, some nice drops, sweet lines, nasty sieves and mandatory undercuts that I have come to expect from Kiwi rivers.

Rangatika Gorge Expedition crew, left to right: Andrew “the cave diver”, Nik “the Puker’, Ben “me” and Suppa “the random Czec guy”

Later that Evening Nik prooved that Kiwi’s can’t drink and puked inside Andrews car as Andrew was driving him home. These colonials can’t hack the pace, I think thats why they left.

Driving north from Taihapi you are faced with 100k’s of dessert, with spectacular views of Mount Doom to the left (Never east shreaded wheat…) west.

However, rather than show you that I have treated you to the equally spectacular view of the back of my car.

Ok then heres one without the goddess.

I think Mount Doom is one of them

Lake Taupo is the next destination reached heading north of highway 1, a lake created when a rather big volcano exploded, abliterating life in the southern hemisphere or something like that. Whats left is a big lake with lots of pummice stone, which floats, so I put some in my wash kit to play with in the bath.

Swimming with pummice, almost as good as swimming with Doll-things

So excited was I to be given a chance to swim with floting pummice that I stripped off and dived into the lake, well actually its really shallow, so I stummbled out into the shallow water wishing I had left my teva’s on, sharp little stones. 15 minutes later I stummbled back, and had my first experience of just how hot the sun is with no ozone to protect us (NZ has a big hole above it) my back was burnt, well burnt, and is still a little uncomfortable 2 days later.

Rotorua, stinks.

of sulpha, because some bright spark thought it would be a good idea to build a city on a thermal pool, and all thermal pools it seems stink of sulpha, nob.

you can clearly see the sulpha fumes gushing from this thermal pool in the heart of Rotarua

The Kaituna - the only good reason to go to Rotta

I paddled the kaituna 4 times between 10 and 1 the next day. Its brill, nothing hard, one 7 meter water fall, boof right onto a big boil, or more likely try and boof to late and end up pencilling into said boil. But the mystic dominated. I eventually got it on video so when I get back I’ll show you. There’s a play hole at the bottom of the river, try as I might I could not loop the mystic.

Auckland - where I am at pressent

Seems a nice city, but nothing like the rest of NZ, its Sunday and everyone is in a hurry, crazy, in the south island everyones so laid back they’re horizontal. If you come to live in NZ don’t live here, its not real NZ.

But saying that I do quite like it, lots of lovely ships in the harbour, and I sold my car. For a cool $700 making a profit of $150 after taking into account expences, like a new exhaust and stearing wheel. Sweet as bro, ‘ey. as a local would say.

A ship.

Tour of Auckland

some photos from the tour of Auckland that I went on:

A view of the largest of about 10 volcanoes to be situated around the city

The Crater of one such volcano.

There’s a funny story to go with this volcano: Some students one early morning drove there pick up truck full of old tires to the top of this volcano, and rolled them all into the crater. After dousing them in petrol they set them alight, if you’ve ever seen a tire fire then you’ll know that they make and unpressidented amount of smoke. The guys then ran down into the surrounding area and called the cops telling them the volcano was errupting, the cops then evacuated the 3km radius of residentual area around the volcano. Awesome, I hope its true, the guys were never caught.

Tuesday

I went sailing, on an Americas cup yacht, it was excellent, really fast and exhillerating, they only cost $5m US. It was really well organsied and we all got a go at winding the winch things, ‘grinding’, and taking the helm, stearing. Through complete fluke I got to sail it under the Harbour bridge, which was interesting as the mast only just fitted under right in the middle and if there was enough angle on it. The Yacht was increadably agile and only slight movement of the wheel would make large course changes, so now I’m thoroughly hooked on sailing and I’m going to get myself one of these Americas cup Yacht when I get home, there should be loads of them kicking about, the race has been going on for ages.

There were two of them, here is a picture of the other one.

The sort of angle that went over at was increadible, suddenly you would be 10 feet above the water, here you can see Aukland in the distance.

Me doing some of the “grinding”, It was harder work than you may expect especially getting the sail up in the first place.