Week 43- Release the Piripaua!

Monday 7th of May started early. I was coaching my senior boys in St. Peter’s and we worked on baseline attack and defense and receiving under pressure. I flew home to wolf down my porridge, went to class for the day before doing a quick grocery shop and going from a run. That evening the two German girls, Celine and Selina, who I had met hiking in the Nelson Lakes came to stay with us and joined for our usual Monday night group dinner. With eight people it was a big curry to feed everyone!

I started class at 8am on Tuesday morning for Mathematical and Computational Modelling in Mechanics. Celine, who was interested in physics, decided to join me though I think that she regretted that decision! I had to do the rest of my classes for the day, so I left my key card with the Germans, so they could come and go to the apartment. I was having some pain in my left elbow so I got the physio to tape it for kayaking that evening. Once class was over I worked in 70 Symonds street until Ulysse was passing so that he could let me into out apartment. All of us went to kayaking that evening but Marlene had a test to do for her entrepreneurship class. It was a multiple choice question test but the answers were very similar sounding so I had to help her translate what she was thinking into the correct answer! At kayaking I started to try roll on my right side as well as my left side. In hindsight, this wasn’t the best idea as I just started to confuse myself!

I was up very early on the Wednesday to say goodbye to the Germans as they left for the airport. I went to class from 9-1 but as I had a lab at two I skipped my midday lecture so I could have lunch! I went running once that was done before quickly putting on a load of washing. Ulysse and Marlene very kindly hung it out for me as I had to fly off to go to Lou’s (from the kayaking club) 20th birthday. We went to a restaurant called New Flavour in Newmarket where the specialty was dumplings. There were about 15 of us all from the kayaking club and the table had a big Lazy Susan on it so we ordered a whole range of dumplings and then just span the table. I was obliged to eat with chop sticks and I feel like I didn’t make it too obvious that I wasn’t particularly comfortable using them! We had delicious pancakes for dessert before we went to a kid’s playground and just messed and sang songs for a couple of hours! Eventually I cycled home.

I was coaching as usual on Thursday morning, but they were having what they called ‘System’s Day’ in college which was a group project, two-day affair, for all the third years. As I wasn’t involved in that, I had the day off! I had a quiet breakfast at home before trying to do up my lab report. I met up with a few of the kayaking kids in the afternoon to get away from the work. That evening Marlene, Harry, Ulysse, Bridget, Alice and I went to a French market to get food. I didn’t quite expect it to be quite so busy! Harry was notoriously hard to contact at this point without a phone so we weren’t sure he was ever going to make it. The rest of us did a quick loop of all the food stalls before we began queuing. Suddenly Harry appeared! He just seems to have a knack of figuring things out. I shared chips (which had been fried twice) and cheese and a pulled pork concoction with Marlene and we watched fireworks as a big group before wandering home to bed.

Friday was again a class free day so I went to the physio to get my sore elbow taped for kayaking that weekend. I was going to Piripaua river which is usually not kayak-able as it is a power station but twice a year they have a release so I was lucky enough to be allowed to go! I collected some dry gear from Jasmine to borrow for the weekend, quickly stopped at the supermarket to make sure I’d have sufficient food for the weekend and was collected by Katrina. We had to grab some stuff from the gear shed but soon we were on our way. The others in the car had lunch from MacDonald’s in Rotorua while I had leftover (cold) vegan lunch from the Wednesday. The whole journey down took about 6 hours South but the last two hours was all on bad dirt roads. There were horses and cows all over the place and I was quite unnerved as Katrina drove way too fast for the roads we were on and even at one stage left the road going too fast round a corner. We were the first of the Aucklanders to arrive at around 17:30 and it was getting pretty dark at that stage. We got everyone’s keys (those who were staying in rooms), left a message for the others on the whiteboard and then I put up my tent. We chatted to Rayna and her mum for a while in their camper van but I did begin to loose patience with them after a while and left to have dinner in the huts. Rayna did reappear and started harping on about DNA tests and thus claiming how she was in fact Scottish. I soon retired to my tent.

Saturday morning rolled around and although it took some time to get set up and run the shuttle, Harry and I were soon on the water with Kaz, Ollie, Justus and Charlotte. This trip was supposed to be for more than beginners so I was quite chuffed to have been taken along. For the first run we walked our kayaks down to the river and got going. I felt quite unstable to begin with and my heart was racing! The run itself wound its way down through plenty of trees and we had to wait at the start for the debris to flush through. I flipped a couple of times and was really struggling to roll on the eddy line. I did end up having one swim though I was becoming more comfortable (even if I felt like a nuisance for needing rescuing!). Rayna had more swims than me and managed to get her kayak caught in a tree so I didn’t feel like the worst person there! We did two more runs and it was a whole load of fun. Back at camp I had to figure out how to work the shower before playing chess with Harry and having dinner. We played spoons and (to my dismay) cards against humanity as a big group. I retired to my tent with only the sound of the rain and my thoughts.

The rain kept up overnight and soaked through the floor of my tent but thankfully I stayed dry. I woke up just before someone’s car alarm went off and had breakfast with the group. The topic of conversation was foils (like the kind you’d find on a boat). I packed up my gear and moistened tent and headed to the river with Katrina. We tried to go to the upper section, got lost, managed to get the car stuck, unstuck the car and eventually found it only to discover that they were turning the flow off so we couldn’t do the upper section. We went back to do one run of the lower section and this time I dropped off the edge of a wall about 4ft into the water which was a bit of a thrill! I felt so much better eddying and thought I’d got the hang of it. I had a dry run which meant that I didn’t flip over at any stage. I did swap boats with Ollie for a little bit and his felt like a tank. It was difficult to turn but it was super stable. At the end I went to get out and then we decided to go a little further. This was a mistake. Harry and Rayna both had a swim dealing with a tree (I just went straight through it in my tank) and then Rayna managed to lose her paddle and hurt her finger. For some reason, this meant that she couldn’t carry her boat back so Ollie carried two boats.

We packed up the trailer and collected Vania who had stayed at the campsite before hitting the road. We stopped a little way down the road to scout a more difficult section of a different river for a future trip. Thankfully Katrina slowed down a bit this time and I got to see some more of the scenery, the massive Kauri trees, the loose horses owned by the locals and of course the bicycles in the gutters of buildings. We went to the hot pools in Rotorua to break up the journey and stayed an hour longer than Harry and Kaz’s car. It was New Zealand mother’s day and we stopped for food at a restaurant in Rotorua. I was given out to for trying to eat my own tuna and wraps rather than buying food there (unsurprisingly). I tried to find a shortcut back to the car to put my stuff back but ended up having to climb over an 8ft fence to get there. There were some children’s colouring sheets to do while we waited for food and then we had a polaroid photo taken of our ‘family’ for mother’s day. To finish we ordered desserts but the rule was that you weren’t allowed to eat from your own spoon! We ended up staying pretty late which meant I had to drive the last two hours and only arrived home at 01:30.