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.