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Dear oh dear, free alcohol at work functions ought to be banned. I reckon. At least for me. Still, on the upside, seeing as today was a total write off (though did go and play squash!) went to see Team America – World Police made by the same guys wot make South Park. It’s quite definitely one of the funniest films I’ve ever seen.

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Crazy weather lately.. it’s really been kinda miserable (for summer) for the last week. On Saturday headed up to Lewis pass with Marcel and Emily and did a small tramp along the tops – we only went for a couple of hours as we’d not (all) brought crampons and an ice-axe.. and also it was blowing a gale with really limited visibility, so there wasn’t much point.

Then it was off to Motueka..(after an hour long soak at Maruia Springs). We had a tiny epic along the way when we stopped in Murchison to get petrol.. and the car decided it didn’t quite want to start again (Marcels car).. but a push got it going again (after we’d tried replacing the battery). So met up with Mhairi and her parents, who are traveling for a couple of weeks.. got taken out for an Indian by them.. which was most kind! All in preparation for The Hike Of DOOM. Well, not really (at all infact), but I thought it sounded a little more exciting.

I’d actually been up before with Maeve and Kirsten in Febuary, but this tramp was a little more interesting as we tried to get up Mt. Arthur.. again, the weather didn’t oblige so we didn’t get to summit.

Mhairis’ parents were unsurprisingly fit (and fun)!

So the pace was fairly quick for the weekend. Which was great, as we got to the hut in fine time and got to chill out and play games (and drink mulled wine from a plastic bottle.. hmmmmm… ok, I’m a mulled wine snob I admit). Scrabble was fun believe it or not ef is a word (it’s the letter F).. as are more useful two letter ones like ZO (Himalayan cattle), XI and XU are also pretty good… We also had a rubber of bridge. Don’t care what slags I get! It’s a great game and I’m sticking to it (and legions of old-folks will back me up I’m sure)

Walking out the next morning along the valley was cruisey.. too so for Mhairi I fear!… she headed off to run a different track and meet her parents later.. I *think* she did about 35km or so in about 4 hours. Quite ridiculous really! :)

And all too soon back to ChCh.. it’s a great place.. but sometimes I think it’d be better if I just got money to enjoy myself and didn’t have to work at all. It really does get in the way of things sometimes!

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Sad day! Sam – a really great American (they do exist.. joking joking!) has headed travelling and I’ll not see him again until I visit North Carolina .. or him to Dublin (or Christchurch where I’m kinda considering living after travelling for 8 months and saying hi to Ireland + Europe again) Met him in January on a canyoning trip.

He’s also kinda tall.. but that’s ok.. even if I do look a little glum about being about a foot shorter than him in this pic..

We headed out to a pretty different restraunt – The Bodhi Tree for his second last night .. it was Burmese. Weird food, spicey – but yum.. lots of little tapas (kinda). It was good anyway! then onto The Twisted Hop microbrewery. The next morning wasn’t fun.. but the night was great.

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So.. got back from the Clarence trip to find that I was locked out of the house (I’d forgotten to leave the spare key outside, and Glynn had left my keys inside and was in Wellington)…

So I tried openening a window with a coat hanger (there was space to get it in – kinda – just needed to lift the latch). I failed miserably. And then Michelle pointed out that I should just go to the landlord – who lives about 100m away – and ask for a spare key. Damn I’m smart.

But it was great, as I came back to the house and was met by John & Maeve – John’s just arrived for 6 weeks travel (from Ireland). They’d just driven down from the North Island that day! So good timing to be back really… Looking forward to getting some climbing done with John. He very kindly brought over my trad climbing gear.. so hope to get some use out of that!

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What a week! Tuesday afternoon headed rafting. We drove up to Hamner Springs and then along a dirt track for about half an hour until we got to the Clarence River.

We stayed the night in a pretty historical site – called The Acheron Accommodation House. It was built in 1863, which makes it kinda old – esp for NZ (here’s a piece of useless trivia – The first section of the London Underground Railway opened in 1862 too (Paddington to Farringdon Street). Wow ;)

AAaaanyway – so yes, stayed the night in this quite historic building. Did have a nice historic smell to it too – the roof was thatch and there’d obviously been fires with little ventilation going on in our room :)

So the next morning (Wed) packed all our worldly possessions (well for the next 5 days) into barrels (one barrel for 2 people) and started off down the river.

And set off on the 180 odd Kms of river. It sounds a lot – and the first couple of days were quite long (8 or so hours on the river)… but it’s pretty cruisey really, most of the time you’re just setting yourself up to be in the right position and letting the current do the rest.

There were excitements…

This raft was trapped between the rock and a hard place… eventually to get through they deflated the front pontoon which allowed the raft to get through. Purty smart move. As far as I know the river was a grade 2 / 2+ with one or two grade 3 rapids (hope to get pics of those later)

The food was incredible on the trip. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten this well camping.. I guess we were pretty famished by the end of the day – but still, twas a good effort (all communal). Though the only thing I wasn’t super impressed by was the damper. Which really is basic food – flour and water ->bread->add jam->kinda icky but edible – for desert.

What else – so yes, then there was a setback on Thursday morning (after our first night on the river). At about 7:30am the wind got up (quite a lot) and actually managed to lift one of the rafts – and blew it accross the campsite… unfortunatly Tim (of the Batch bash party) got hit. Not sure if he was knocked out, but certainly had to be airlifted out. Really unfortunate as the weather really cheered up after that point. It did have the upshot that I got to kayak the rest of the river (as we had to bring his boat down the river – and I have a sort of a roll I can do :) While it’d have been much better if Tim hadn’t have been clobbered (he’s fine now) I was glad to get the practice in – really getting into kayaking.

Now.. by the end of Thursday the idea was to be at a point where we could try to get up Tapuea-O-Uenuku (2885m)

unfortunately due to the bad weather and needing the airlift ‘n all (mountain radios are the business) we weren’t in a position to do it. It meant we had a slightly easier time of the next couple of days – and, well, it was nice to have slightly relaxed holiday too ! (if we’d done the mountain we would have walked from 02:30->19:00 ish). Still, would have given it a go – supposed to be a long – but not technically difficult climb.

Did do a short hour’s scramble up a hill, and you can see a pic of some of the land we were going through (it varied quite a lot – but it’s still a very dry part of NZ)

It really was great not seeing a road or another human (outside of our giantic party and the helicopter ;) for 4 days..

Had a great day on Friday – got tipped over in my boat -4 or 5 times, but rolled back up all but one time. Then had a shocking day on Saturday and had to pull the spraydeck and go swimming 3 times. Gah. But did run a grade 3 rapid – called Jawbreaker.

My friend Jana took this pic of me running it…

It got its name as a jetboater was coming up the river, and tried to go up the rapid.. but did’t *quite* make it intact. Ah well.

And then Sunday was a short 1/2 day out to the coast. So yes, a magic week, so glad I got to go on it in the end, couldn’t find a better group to do it with