On Sunday 28th September there was a release on the Wairoa so a group of us got together and drove to the river near Tauranga. The new arrival to the Auckland Canoe Polo Club was a guy called Sam from Switzerland. We picked DaveI and Sam up and met up with Paul en route. As Seán and I had just sold our huka, and Nic’s scud, we borrowed more boats from DaveO. I got Nic’s rad and Seán had an inazone 230. We had a good day out just doing two runs of the lower section. We had a bit of fun in the whirlpool on our second run down – take a look at Seán’s website for a video of it.
The following weekend we went down to the Lake Aniwhenua campsite for our last proper weekend in New Zealand (this trip!). It was also Nic’s birthday on the Saturday so a good group of about 30 of us gathered there to help her celebrate. On the Saturday I ran the Aniwhenua section of the Rangitaiki in a topoduo twice. First time I had a complete beginner, Sue, who loved every minute of it. We quickly started paddling back up eddies to go down the rapids again! Second time around I had Tanya, who had paddled a little before. We did a couple of impressive rescues on that trip!
Our Irish friends; Nicki, Davin and Michelle arrived at the lake while we were on the first run, so Nicki and Davin had joined us on the second run. Unfortunately Davin decided to try to eat Dave’s kayak on the trip and broke one of his teeth – yes, the plastic in kayaks is pretty strong! He has since had his tooth fixed and his grin is back to normal.
Later that day five of us; Fuzzy, Greg, Dave, Andy and I, went for a quick run down the mid-section of the Rangitaiki. It was a fun run, bouncing our way down not bothering to take any eddies as we were hoping not to run out of daylight! When we got back to the campsite we were hoping that dinner would just be cooked as we were pretty hungry, but no, the rest of the group decided they’d wait for us to get back before starting cooking! A tasty dinner was had by all, possibly made extra tasty by the fact that some of us were so hungry! While we were doing that run, Seán had raced down the Aniwhenua section in about 19 minutes. We had been taking about an hour to do it with the group…
The next morning I was woken bright and early by an apparent earthquake, which turned out to just be fuzzy shaking our van. Good thing the handbrake was on or we could have ended up in the lake! When everyone assembled a group of us got ready to go paddling. Campbell, Steve and Karrn’s son who I had taken down the river in a duo previously, asked would I take him again. Remembering his last trip with me I was quite surprised! He didn’t really like being splashed… This time however, I took the easiest routes and he stayed pretty dry and happy!
After a bite of lunch it was time for more goodbyes. Not fun, but again we promised to go back and we could be in for a lot of visitors at home over the next few years!
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