Finally, I am complete again, I’ve been reunited with my towel which has been missing since the disastrous Mt. Owen trip.

Huge sentimental value seeing as I .. umm… well ‘borrowed’ it when I was in yosemite (California) And have treasured it ever since. Indeed – as you can see from this extract from The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy – they’re massively useful things

Towels

A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you – daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough. More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (nonhitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with. Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.” (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

Looks like climbing in Thailand might be all right. My friend Domhnall sent me a link to info on the place.. and I quote

The boats are now running fairly regularly and are getting better.

There is no flooding, the power is fine and all the food is fresh and boated in daily.

We have all seem the grisly pictures in the media. Thankfully they are nothing to do with Railay, Ao Nang and indeed most of Thailand. If you have booked a holiday in Railay, the best thing you can do is to turn up and enjoy yourselves. The locals are panicking that everyone is going to cancel, and that they will lose their businesses as a result. They would like it known that they are all open as usual, and are looking forward to seeing old friends, and making new ones.

So who knows.. guess will find out when I get there.

Murchison for New Years was excellent. Really excellent. Here you can see me in the middle of one of the bigger rapids we went through.

It was kinda exciting to say the least. I wasn’t having an incredibly successful day really, took 2 swims when I didn’t manage to get my roll working…. more practice needed for sure.

New Years was great fun though.. it was lovely at the campsite, knew heaps of people from caving & tramping & climbing circles. Also, someone had caught a wild pig and donated it to the campsite! so we had roast pork for dinner. Quite yum (sorry to all the Vege’s out there). And just chilling out with the great friends I’ve made here, it really was an excellent way to see in the New Year… The one making the face is Warick!

p.s… that pic of ‘me in one of the bigger rapids’ wasn’t me – nor even of a river I’m going to be attempting for a very very long time – if ever. It was a trip that my friend Tim was on last year. Warick says it’s pretty ok.. but I have my doubts!

Headed back down to ChCh as I kinda want to get some work done as I’ve got a project which has to get finished before I head to Thailand, and I’ve got 2 irish friends arriving within the week that I really want to spend time with. Fun times :)

Went over to Dinner with John and Maeve for dinner on the 29th (thanks – was yum) decided to go and do a few easy routes on the 30th..

So climbed for a couple of hours. Great fun, here you can see Maeve climbing with a broken arm. Now that’s dedication that is.

In the evening I headed up to Murchison to get a couple of days kayaking in and also to hang out for New Years.

So Christmas eve took the day off work and headed up to the N.Island – to Palmerston North (Palmy) where my Aunt and family live. It’s just so great to be able to spend Christmas time with family. So ate lots, drank lots – the weather obliged by being quite overcast and dull, so I wasn’t super homesick at all :)

On St. Stephens’ day I headed across to the Coramandal to see my friend Yvonne..

Stopped in at Rotorua on the way – a thermally active town, steam comes out of everywhere and the ground is warm to touch.

That pic is of the bath house.. a lovely old building (as they go here). People used to come all the way from London to get rejuvenated, and also to see the Pink and White terraces It would take about 6 months to get there.. so it must have been incredible! However an eruption destroyed the terraces back in 1886, and Rotorua town was developed shortly after to keep attracting people to the area.

So yes, on to see Yvonne.. she used to work in the MED in ChCh.. her family live close to one of the good surf beaches in the area.

We also took in ‘Hot Water Beach’. This was kinda fun. There’s a thermal vein or something running right under the beach. So you dig down about 3 feet and up through the sand comes hot water.

It was also the day when we heard about the awful news of the tsunami in Asia. My first thought was of Maeve and Andy who I’d recently got an e-mail from, and it sounded like they might have been climbing at the place I’m (probably not) still going to. Fortunately they’d left 2 days before it struck.. Not really sure what my ‘holiday’ plans are any more. I think I’m going to get in touch with the Red Cross and see if any help can be done (if they want any). I have heard that people are already climbing there again – and while 1/2 of me thinks this is completely insensitive.. the other 1/2 thinks that they need to get their tourism back up again asap.. so not really sure what to do about the holiday – I can’t cancel it so will just have to see what’s happening on the ground when I get there I guess.

Finally the long drive back again – got some really excellent views of Mt. Tongariro and Mt. Ngauruhoe (Mt. Doom in the Lord of the Rings)

I was a bit silly – we’ve had really bad weather lately, but I knew these days were supposed to be fine – I really should have left early and gone and done the Tongariro Crossing.. but I guess I’ll just have to do it next time, supposed to be one of the best (one day) walks in the Country.

Then it was back down to ChCh on the 29th.