Huka Falls

wow, alot has happened since the last blog...
we stayed in Rotorua for a few more days - running the Kaituna river almost every day, ( i think we ran it a total of 13 times). Really nice river; a grade 3/4 with big drops, jungle-like vegitation and a couple of good playspots.
After this we headed down to the Taupo region to tackle the rivers there; these included doing the Tauraga river, both parts of the Rangittaiki River, Full-James playwave, Huka Hole and most recently Huka Falls.....this was awesome, definitely the scariest thing ive ever done!! -

Running this waterfall was really the reason for being in Taupo, although unfortunatly, on arrival we found the river to be at its highest velocity meaning it would be a suiside mission. We thus waited the whole of 3 days for the waterlevels to drop, just camping alongside the river and eagerly watching the river gauge. Finally, about 10am on Sunday morning, the river had lost enough volume to make it runnable ....
We drove down to the tourist-viewing bridge where we could scout a line through the 200m's of whiewater above the falls. The bridge was swarmed with toursists... it made it very hard focusing on the river and calming nerves with people all around whispering amoungst themselves and pointing and gasping as they began to cotton-on that the 3 of us in kayaking kit were about to run the Huka Waterfall. It was a bit surreal walking our boats to the put-in; you could feel the eyes of the countless tourists on your back, hear murmers of "insane", "crazy" mixed with the numerous pats on the back and good lucks.
The best part of all this attension had to be the group of awe-struck American girls who insisted on helping us get ready and filming the whole event for us.

The lines were fairly straighforward and a nice 'recovery eddy' had formed on the left 15m from the drop. This didnt really help to calm my nerves though, i was terrified! We ran it together, as a group of three with about a ten second gap between each of us. We all made it safely through the rapids and over the fall to the cheers of our audience overhead.
What a buzz! Im still shaking thinking about it!

Road Trippin'

We have a car!, after the small problem of changing a battery the car has been running well (touch wood). On the last day at the bliss-stick factory we built ourselves a roofrack and nailed it to the car (plus it's now coated with stickers - it looks awesome). so began our road trip....

this weekend we headed north to Rotorua in search of paddles, which are suprisingly hard to come-by in New Zealand. The best place, or so we were told, was a small shop called "sunspots"- this owned and run by kayakers who handmake a huge range of paddles.
we were spoilt for choice ... i bought a second-hand set similar to mine Chilli's back home - carbon fibre, 194cm (very pretty) for $380, resisting the erge to part with $600 dollars for some carbon cranks which were VERY tempting! (i also bought a cow's tail)
After this tiresome dose of retail theropy it was about 6pm, but with shiney new boats and paddles we were desperate to get on the water! We therefore drove a few km to the Kaituna River get-out where there's a really nice playhole - perfect for experimenting with the new kit. I love my SCUD!

Sunday morning we drove to the Wairoa - a dam released grade 4/5 which only runs every other weekend, we ran it as a group of 5. it was a really cool run with plenty of challenging boulder-gardens, drops, slots and waterfalls (plus the weather was fantastic which really set it off). We had no problems other than on one rapid - a particularly nasty rapid followed by a steep drop appropriatly named "the rollercoaster".... our leader swam and i got a good beating in a monster stopper, got backlooped, then experienced some unpleasant downtime pinned against a wall.
That afternoon we drove back to Rotorua, bought food, petrol and other essentials then set up tents on the lake's banks - beautiful spot and really chilled evening.