The Wrong Map

Once acclimatised to the New Zealand weather I decided to get stuck into some of the adventure sports on offer in New Zealand with some white water rafting. We tackled the Raningata Rapids, located a few hours outside outside Christchurch & home to rapids with a couple of 'grade 5' ratings. 'Grade 5' is apparently the harshest rapid you can raft whilst your raft usually remains horizontal. I was joined in my boat, amongst others, by an insane Swede who had last done rafting whilst training with the Swedish Special Forces: "pretty much the same except we had 4 machine guns mounted to the raft" he informed us. I soon learnt that the steepest rapids were best dealt with by diving into the middle of the boat and hoping for the best, and we were fortunate enough not to roll our raft. There was time afterwards for a 10m jump of a rock into the 8 degree glacial melt water (it felt colder than the sea in Bournemouth in April).

In Christchurch I hopped on my first 'Kiwi Experience' bus, basically a hop-on, hop-off service which carries mostly Brits around New Zealand. We headed for Kaikura where I spent the afternoon swimming with dolphins. Our boat managed to find two pods with over 400 dolphins between them. They were literally everywhere, jumping around, circling you and doing back flips.

Next stop was the town of Nelson & a two day bout of tonsillitis. Once this had subsided I went on a two day trip with 4 other people from the Kiwi Bus to the Abel Tasman National Park. Day one involved kayaking 18km up the coast, stopping off at picturesque beaches and looking for penguins and seal pups along the way. We camped that night in a lodge & played some cards with 2 tea lights as our only light source (they had forgot to mention to bring candles). Day two got more interesting.

We had been told to walk North up the coast and get to one of two water taxis at either 12pm or 3pm. After setting off early in the morning, 3 of us decided to catch the first water taxi back whilst another two decided to continue and catch the later taxi from up the coast. We had no issues catching our taxi, but the office seemed bemused as to why we had taken a taxi back and not walked. We waited around for the other two to get off the last water taxi. They weren't there. After making some inquiries we discovered that in fact we had been given the Summer season maps & timetables when in fact we were in the 'Shoulder season'. We should have been told to walk South and not bother with any taxis at all. Unfortunately for the 2 girls who had headed to the far North had missed the last water taxi as they had a Summer timetable. Once the company realised their mistake they sent another boat up the coast and managed to find them (alone in the national park). To add to the day, a couple of tyres blew out on the bus on the drive back to Nelson, but fortunately the driver managed to wrestle with the steering and park us on the hard shoulder ok! Westport tomorrow.