Thursday, June 17, 2010

At least we'll be clean!

We're at that really frustrating stage of the bus build - forking out lots of money and seeing naff-all progress!

In fact the bus is probably now worth even less than when we bought it - it's got lots of holes in the floor and the sides.
But we do have - an outside shower. Not that there's any water connected to it.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

This week a year ago...

We were at Outward Bound. By this stage of our adventure we had already:
Saturday afternoon - sailed from the Picton Ferry to the isolated lodge we were staying at in an open cutter, which I swam ashore from after we'd anchored it. I guess someone had to!
Sunday - sailed into Anikiwa. And rowed the last few miles as there was no wind. There were ten of us, but those old wooden cutters are bloody heavy things to row. Been introduced to the school and our watch-house, done some PT and gone for a run in the rain.
Monday - our day on the high ropes. 10 or more metres up in the air, on wires strung between some beautiful old kahikateas. No way down but to get to the end, over some amazingly challenging obstacles. I really lost it at one stage on this one. Trained for kayaking, including learning how to wet exit if we capsized. Yep, more time getting wet in mid-winter! Then after dinner it was off to kayak camp - sleeping in an old shed with no glass in the windows.
Tuesday - kayaking down the river. Learned how to maneuver by playing bullrush and canoe polo. Then down some easy rapids, followed by a couple of sets of really hard ones. I went down one lot backwards, and Craig clearly thought he was more suited to being a keel - went down all the rapids under his boat instead of on top of it! Back to Anikiwa for dinner, only to be told after that we were off on solo that night! At least we got to spend our first night of solo as a couple.
Still to come was
Wednesday - still out in the bush on solo. We were split up during the day and spent that night on our own as true solo.
Thursday - back to camp and then spent the afternoon doing things like blind soccer and running through the mudflats - not just running, actually rolling in the mud as well. Got all packed up for our big hike the next day.
Friday - there had been too much rain during the week for us to climb the mountain we were supposed to conquer, so we did about 14km of the Queen Charlotte Track instead. It was glorious, although the start was tough - no dropping us off on the track, we had to hike 40 minutes up a firebreak to get to the track.
Saturday - we were leaving at midday, so figured they couldn't cram too much in for us. Wrong. Dropped us off by boat 12km from school and we got to run home along the QC track.

This doesn't even start to cover how much we did, experienced and learned during that week. It was one of the most challenging things either of us had ever done - and I wouldn't have missed it for the world.