It started Tuesday morning, I had two essays due on Thursday at 4, one due Monday at 3 and a midterm Wednesday afternoon. Finished the first essay (on the nitrate uptake rates of seaweeds) on Tuesday night, after having started it Tuesday morning. Got up early on Wednesday to begin work on the second essay (on a marine survey of the goat island marine reserve) and took a short break from 4 to 7 to begin studying for the test, take the test and eat, before returning to the essay which was finally finished by 2 Thursday morning. Thursday I got up, began the essay due Monday, attended class, edited the two due later that day, turned them in and continued work on Mondays essay. At this point I had completed 2 and a half essays and one test in two days. Thursday night we left for the Whanganui river and a canoe trip that was to last until Sunday evening.
The canoe trip was amazing. It is the first of the great walks that I have done to date (I have been trying to stay off the beaten path in that regard) but it was well worth it. It was Natalie, Mike, Katie, and myself. Mike and Katie were two of Natalie's friends who turned out to be really cool. We got to the departure area late that night. It was just some one's back field that we were supposed to camp in, which seemed really sketchy but it was owned by the canoe hire place, Wades Landing, and in the morning we marshaled all of our stuff and were on our way. They provided watertight containers for our gear which was really nice. We got packed and piled into a van. The drive actually took a long time, we left at 8:30 and stopped for morning tea at around 10:00. After milling around and buying the hut passes for the trip (180$ for a canoe and a hut pass - I think we swindled them out of a hut pass apiece) we were issued our life jackets and we piled back into the van. From there is was only a couple minutes drive to the put in site and in due time we were given a canoe, some instructions, a paddle apiece and set on our way.
We opted to do the 3 day version of the trip instead of the full 5 day as we all had class to get to, it turned out that 3 was plenty for me. The first day had approximately 6 hours of paddling and it was going to be dark at around 6:30 so we were slightly pressed for time. We did well though. Natalie was quite an apt partner and we settled into a rhythm. The front person set up a consistent paddling stroke and the one in the back followed and steered. After two hours my shoulders were pretty sore and I got to take a turn in the back. Being in orchestra for so long, I quickly followed Natalie's strokes and it seemed to work out nicely. It was much more fun to be in the back steering than in the front just paddling, but it did get monotonous in either spot for too long, and we both preferred the back. I noticed that Natalie didn't match her strokes up with mine when she was in the back and I was in the front - and it really worked the same, somehow though I couldn't bring myself to not follow her when I was in back - apparently I'm OCD a bit. The scenery was pretty neat and being on the water was such a great experience. Its hard to describe an experience like that. Every two hours or so we switched positions and even with a relaxing lunch break, by dark we did arrive at the campsite. There was a hut there that we weren't planning on sleeping in, and we pitched our tent on a set of terraces cut into the side of the hill. The vegetation was so thick and the side hills so steep that there was no where else to pitch the tent except at the DOC campsite. The hut slept about 30 and it filled up rather quickly, the campsites filled up quickly as well. It was a national holiday, ANZAC day (like our memorial day) on Friday and the weekend we were there marked the final weekend of peak season (prices would have dropped quite a bit if we had put it off one week). There turned out to be around 80 people at the campsite that night, at least 50 of which were expecting to sleep in the hut. It was a mess, the poor hut warden didn't know what to do. We cooked and went down to the shore and hung out around a fire with some foreign students doing some exchange woofing program.
The next morning we were the last to leave and started out around 9 with five hours of paddling ahead of us. Slighlty sore from the day before, but well rested and well fed. The water was pretty flat for the first two days, only small riffles to go through and we made good time. Stopped for a nice long lunch on a sandbar and checked out some caves in the canyon walls. Saw a dead sheep caught on a stick in middle of the river. The campsite that night was less crowded and had more room. There was a marae there and more cooking facilities. Had another good dinner and hung out on the beach again. There was a possum hanging out in the tree by our tent when we got back, he was pretty small and quite fearless.
The next morning we started out. The pickup site was 4 hours of paddling down the river but this time there was some class 2 whitewater, which isn't all that big, unless you're in a canoe for the first time. The day went well, I got to steer down a little rapid and then we switched to let Natalie take the big one - which was a good thing because I would have swamped us. We were told at the begining to go way left unless we wanted to swim. Mike and Katie went first and they ended up swimming. We agreed that that was the last thing that we wanted to happen and that it was best to hit the rapid hard and see what would happen. We stayed slightly left, but got scuked into it, we were able to ride it out, to much applause from those on the bank who had flipped previously. We did however take on quite a bit of water and had to go bail for a bit. We were pretty excited that we made it through and the rest of the day passed fairly uneventfully. There were some other rapids but nothing quite as big as that one. Saw another dead sheep on a hillside. Made it to the pick up site shortly before we were due. The ride back took even longer than the ride to the drop off. We started at 3ish and got back to the car around 7. Stopped in town to buy some food and arrived in auckland fairly late. It was really disapointing to have to come back to civilization.
Started working again monday morning on the essay and was finished by the time it was due - I am pretty proud of my procrastinating skills on that one.
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