In case anyone didn't know, I went to the UK for 2 weeks in order to catch up with friends and family. It was the first time I'd met my new nephew and he's lovely. Definitely takes after James' side of the family and looks exactly like James.
I'm surprised he hasn't been bought a bike yet!

Anyway, too much happened for me to really put down but it was a great trip and fantastic to see everyone!


The new addition to the clan!



Sarah in Salisbury


Lisa in sunny Manchester


Lloyd and Karen in the pub.

On Thursday night I thought I'd organise a Canyoning adventure with a slight difference, it's all in the dark! Well after another email around work, I only received 1 reply this time. Yep, I work with 119 people who can come up with a lame excuse to not have fun ;o)
Luckily for me, my housemate Jen found a few people to take along so we ended up with 8 people in total who were keen, and so off we went to Piha canyon for a bit of an adventure.

The idea of canyoning is to start at the top of a mountain and follow a river down to sea level, traversing caves, waterfalls and rocks on the way down. For this particular canyon, we had to abseil down a waterfall, climb through a cave network and take a running jump off a cliff into pitch blackness, hoping to land on the water below and miss the rocks.

Great fun!



Abseiling down the waterfall


Clambering through a cave

After saying that I'd never, ever go dragon boating again, the inevitable happened and once again I found myself in a dragon boat over the weekend. Due to a spate of injuries amongst the original crew, I was asked as to come in as a late replacement and, like a complete sucker, I agreed. Sadly this year the crew wasn't quite match up to the same standard as previous years and I arrived to a lot of debate about how to paddle, how to race and what we should do. Basically a typical bunch of nerds, one of which had actually written a computer program to work out how best to seat everyone according to their weight!

True to form, we came dead last in the corporates division, but salvaged some pride by beating the All Womens' Breast Cancer Survivors 4th team. (The other 3 Cancer survivor teams beat us!)

I'll say it again, never, ever, ever again.





Notice the wake of the other boat next to us, we only lost this race by 2 boat lengths!

This Saturday just gone, I organised a "Tree Adventure" ( http://www.tree-adventures.com/whoodhill/index.htm ) for my work. Sadly only 2 work collegues were up for the challenge out of 120 people! Blimey, you can take a horse to water........

The adventure is basically 8 courses around a wood, each course consists of various obstacles which need to be traversed, all at a height of at least 6 meters. There's flying foxes, cargo nets, monkey ropes, swings and even a suspended surfboard which all need to be traversed. Obviously there's a safety harness, but it's still hilarious and I was lucky to have a bunch of great people to go with.

Anyhoo, we arrived, had a briefing and there we were set loose. It took about 3 hours in total after which we drove to the beach and had a refreshing swim. Nice!

Here's the obligatory photos! Sorry for the late post but my camera's gone missing so I had to grab these from a friend.

We had 2 kitesurfing professionals over in NZ for the weekend, Shannon Best and Clinton Bolton, both representing Best Kiteboarding. As such, the local Best dealer put on a great kitesurfing weekend and most Auckland kiters turned up at some point to check out what was happening.
On Saturday, we kited at Whangaparaoa (say that when you've had a couple of beers) and there was a good 20-30 kiters out at a time, which is insanely crowded for Auckland. The day was pretty good although the wind was quite gusty, luckily there was plenty of people to have a chat with and generally hang out.
That night we all had a few beers and unfortunately I challenged Clinton Bolton, one of the pro's, to a trick contest the following morning. Damn that beer!
Luckily all had been forgotten by the following morning and we headed out to Muriwai to scope out some waves. I have to say this day was one of the best kitesurfing days I've ever had. Even Shannon and Clinton got very excited when they saw the conditions and they rushed out as quickly as they could. The waves were a nice 2-3 foot with a long period between, the wind was a good 20 knots and there was flat sections everywhere. A "perfect playground" to quote Shannon Best.

After a solid 4-5 hours of kiting, everyone decided their bones had taken enough punishment and everyone packed up, had a sausage sandwich in the carpark courtesy of a travel BBQ set and had a chat about the weekend. Shannon and Clinton both turned out to be really nice blokes and were genuinely happy with the welcome they'd received.

More pictures should be coming later, it'll be easy to spot me as I was generally the only one not on a Best kite!

Tony appeared for the weekend, he's over from Sydney on business and managed to wangle a weekend over here with me! Yay for Tony!

Well, the wind forecast wasn't looking that exciting for Auckland so we took a trip down to Raglan for the weekend where winds of 15+ knots were forecast. Raglan, though, is a magical spot where you can kite in sub 10 knots when the tide is flowing in the right direction and as such, I was sure we were going to get a kite in.

Luckily for us it came in 15+ knots on both days anyway, so we had several great sessions. On both days we were pretty much first in and last out, and Tony impressed me with his new found jumping ability and super smooth kiting skills.

We managed to salvage the car on Friday! Unfortunately there wasn't a lot left to pick up but it's a requirement to remove all wrecks from the beach so it had to be done. It was amazing how much damage the sea had done to it, but I guess it had been in the water for a good 4 days. If you're wondering where the bonnet is, it had gone through the windshield! It took me a while to find someone willing to pick up a car from the beach, because it's so risky, but I finally managed to get someone called Dave from Tatonka landscaping. His truck was awesome! It was originally designed as an offroad vehicle that could pick up large stone works and transport them around, but he's finding more and more business picking up wrecks from the beach.

I've been asked to upload some photos of the new pad and housemates, so here we are!


Evi working hard



Jen in the lounge


The balcony from the lounge


The deck


It's hard to get an impression of the house from a few photos, so I'll just have to describe is as a lovely, airy house surrounded by trees but very close by the city.

Well, it's been a while since I updated this blog, but I've been quite busy and my camera has been out of action for a couple of weeks.
I've moved house and now live with a German chick and another Brit. Really enjoying it and the house if lovely, don't panic, pictures will soon follow.

Over the weekend I had a bit of a surf and a few drinks with some people from work. On Monday I took a sickie as Jen (new housemate) had a friend coming over and we thought we'd all go and do some snorkeling at a marine reserve. Jen and her friend are both marine biologists so there was plenty to be shown.

On the way back someone (ok, me) had the bright idea of going to Muriwai for some wakeboarding on the beach. Well, to cut a long story short, there was a lull, a freak wave and there's a new addition to the car wrecks at Muriwai beach.
Bugger.
Oh well, it's not the first time and I'm sure they'll be others!

 

Goodbye Bighorn!

 

Housemate Jen at the scene of the crime!

Rob and his two German backpacker friends came over to NZ for a while and we thought we should meet up. I offered to pick them up from the airport on Friday and go on a trip for the weekend.
Of course my car didn't start on Friday morning and after a quick panic, I managed to buy a new battery and everything was hunky dory.



Well, we set off on Sat morning and 5 hours later we arrived in the North. We had a quick look at the famous Shipwrecks (famous surf beach)



We then hit 90 mile beach and travelled up until we saw an awesome wave with a couple of surfers on it. Rob was very excited and it was a shame we didn't have any surf boards for him, but he got some great pictures



We stopped along the way to admire the scenary, including a car that had been on the beach for 6 weeks (according to one local) and we even found some wild horses. Wow.




Arriving at the far, far north end we stopped for a while for some sandboarding. A local Maori women hires out boards and was a great source of information about local spirits and spots. She even told us where to camp.










By this time it was getting late, so we made our way to the camp site and settled down for the night. We felt a bit guilty as one of the other campers moved when we setup next to him, but he just said he wanted to be isolated from people so what can you do?



The next morning we drove down to the beach, access is via a stream and it's great fun to drive through. Especially at speed! ;o)




Rob had the foresight to buy some rope and he even made a wakeboarding handle, so we decided to have a morning of car surfing. the girls hadn't done it before so it was a great experience all round.








Just as we were packing up and the tide was coming in, I again had car trouble! the battery was dead, again. Another quick panic and I was starting to wonder if I was going to lose another car to the sea when some fishermen turned up and gave us a jump start. Thank god. From this point on it was rolling starts and finding places to park on a hill was the order of the day.

We stopped to admire a shark on the beach, no idea what type it is but it looked cool (if a little dead  :o(  )




Finally, we headed home and after buying another battery to power the headlights (call me Mr Battery, I now have 3) we made it back ok. Then it was just a case of meeting up the following day to swap pictures and wish Rob & co well on their trip around the rest of NZ.