Belated Merry Christmas!

Hello hello everyone! Hope you've all had a lovely christmas and things are shaping up nicely for New Years.
So i know you avid readers all like to see some photos every once in a while so i'll start with some of those!

As I think you all know, Sam, for some reason, bought a sea kayak a while back, which had to be built and then trucked up to Auckland. That all took some time, however on 21st dec. with it ready and waiting, we headed back up to Auckland.

So for the first time in about two months Sam donned his paddling kit, hopped in his shiny new sea kayak and paddled the four miles across Auckland harbour up to Takapuna.

From there we continued up north to Shakespear Park, Sam in his sea kayak, me in the van, for Sam's first night in his tent and me as back up, should he have forgotten anything.

The next morning Sam packed his boat, (something Im sure he's got quicker at by now) filed his first EVER trip log with the cost guard, and we parted way (for a bit anyway)!

Since then Sam's continued north, slowed by the wind, but by all accounts (texts and calls) doing just fine! Im led to believe even swag his way into christmas lunch on a yacht!
For my part, Im back down in Okere Falls for now, hanging out and kayaking, even on christmas day!

Good times!

Post again soon!
Doug 

At last!

So new author! Me! Doug! Hows it going every one?
Now this is just going to be a quick one, well really just post the much awaited (not very good) Kaituna video!

I will endeavour to post a gain soon to tell you all about the wonderful things going on!

Until then....hope you enjoy!

Kaituna Vid (not!)

I'm sorry, but there is no video (online for now) owing to many, many weak excuses, including the one where I don't know how to work iMovie or Doug's Macbook. Uploading the video is just like trying to get Doug to get ready before about 11am. I just can't work out how.

In the meantime, we've been pretty busy. I've been putting together the rest of the gear that I need for my sea boat, and Doug competed in a 6 hour mountain bike style enduro race on the Kaituna. The race started at 11am. Competitors had to sprint the 3km section, which don't forget features class 3/4 rapids and a 7m waterfall, before running their boats up to the bottom car park, finishing their lap with a jog back up to the start where they tagged their team mates so they could begin the next lap. The winning team got 24 or so laps, each competitor managing 8 or 9. A very respectable effort. A special mention however goes to Jamie Sutton (brother of Sam), who competed in the solo (or in my mind, psychopath) category. He, over 6 hours, completed 21 laps of the Kaituna, just 3 less than the winning team of three. Incredible.

Some photos can be found on Facebook, here.

News about the next month or so for Sam now. I'm planning on taking my sea boat on a paddle from Auckland up to the Bay of Islands, where I'm going to see how my shoulder feels and potentially carry on further. It's one of these, and I'm super psyched to get it packed full of camping gear and finally get amongst it in a kayak after two months spent out of a boat. This does mean that the blog updates are going to be even less frequent. Doug does of course have the password to the blog and he may well provide some updates too, but to keep up with him, you're probably best to look at Facebook.

Keeping track of me will be a bit easier. Each evening (morning in the UK) I'm going to fire off an 'OK' message on my spot beacon, which gets displayed here along with my location. The keener amongst you can also check out the charts en route for free at the Land Information New Zealand website here. Given enough motivation and boredom, you could overlay the two and have a really, really good time.

So it's Au Revoir for now,

Catch you all soon,

Sam and Doug.

Catch up

So it might have been a while since the last post... Our time in the last fortnight has been spent separately, but we're now back together just outside Rotorua, camped out by Lake Ratoiti which conveniently for Doug is only five minutes away from the Kaituna get on. Sit back, crack a beverage and let me explain what's been happening.

With the shoulder feeling a little stronger and with some time to kill in Auckland, we thought we would go and check out a local climbing wall. The Project is in New Lynn, in a little industrial estate in the south west corner of Auckland. It's owned by a guy called Zane and it's pretty small, but it features a few overhangs and a little roof at the back along with a campus board and some rings set up from the ceiling. A few months here and you'd be a beast.

A blurry pic, but it gives you a good sense of angle and size. Zane lives in a little room behind the wall on the left hand side. I never met him, or anyone that works there for that matter, because there's no reception. To climb there, you get a key out of the letterbox outside, let yourself in, rip your skin apart for a couple of hours (where did my callouses go?) and then leave ten bucks and lock the door behind you. No forms, no bother. 

After all that excitement, Doug went off for another couple of weeks at Fabian's YMCA centre just north of Auckland, and I disappeared up to Russell in the bay of islands for a couple of weeks. It's a lot of fun up there, and one of the most beautiful places that I've ever seen - such a tease, because I've got no photos! You'll have to take my word for it.

My life up there was filled with hardship. Staying on a couch with a couple of locals, I spent my days doing a combination of the following; drinking beer, sailing on a friend's yacht and hanging out to the beach. Often all in one day. The weather was terrible though, it didn't go above about 22 degrees the whole time, but luckily I think over the next few months at least the weather is expected to be much, much hotter. Is it snowing in London yet?

Alright, before I turn all of my readers (both of you) against me, I'll round up this post with a promise. Doug is putting the finishing touches on a pretty good video of Kaituna boating with his international team of Andy (NZ) and Kudzo (JPN) which I'll post up on the blog when I next get good internet. Something to look forward to!

Catch you all soon,

Sam and Doug.

Climbing!

A slightly more exciting week! Videos and stuff to follow once Doug finishes the edits but right now you've got some BIG FAT WORDS. As people close to me know, 'I'm a climber' and since white water boating will for the next month hold an unacceptably high risk of injuring my shoulder further, I've spent the last week dragging Doug around and going climbing.

So after a flying visit to Des and Doreen on monday night, we left Rotorua and blasted down to Wharepapa South, a small town more or less in the centre of the North Island. This was a small town in the New Zealand sense; five or six houses, a school (!) and most importantly, a climbing shop with a camp site. Eight bucks got us a place to sleep for the night, but the A4 printed guidebooks and Bryce's expertise were free so on his advice we headed with over to check out the local crag with dusk drawing in.

Spot the van! Froggatt Edge is undoubtedly a pretty cool crag, with grades ranging from 10 to 28... French 4 to 7c. Happily, it also dries super quickly. It was raining pretty hard as we drove up the farm track that leads to the car park, but by the time we'd unpacked all of our climbing stuff and walked from the van up to the crag, the faces were dry (even if the pockets in the rock that formed the holds were still a little wet). This meant that I could quickly work my way up a couple of 16s, or French 5s before it got dark. The shoulder was a little bit tender when I got up the next day, so I volunteered Doug for the first lead climb of his life, on the second day he'd ever climbed outside. Hero!

This was his third route of the day, a little 15m 14, which weighs in at French 4 ish. Climbed with only a small amount of terror, it was nonetheless a pretty strong lead.

Video of Doug and friends the Kaituna and a little more on climbing coming up in the next update!

Catch you all soon,

Sam and Doug.

Misadventures

So Doug and I drove down from Auckland on Saturday morning, camped out at Okere falls, and Doug put in a couple of runs on the Wairoa on Sunday. No footage or pics I'm afraid due to some technical camera issues (Doug forgot it), but thanks to the many friendly reminders from the rest of the boaters on the water, Doug successfully managed to avoid the undercut that he swam into last week and got away with just a couple of rolls on his runs. Meanwhile, I ran the shuttle for our group, and once word got out that I was the shuttle bitch, other boaters unknown to me would run up and throw their keys at me and get me to run their shuttles too. A nice way to get to know people from the rest of the scene!

So that's the last two days in a nutshell. We stayed last night at Rotorua Thermal Springs, the camp site we stayed at in our first night in the van, and today we have nothing much planned apart from some washing and a visit to Leigh's mum and dad up on Tilsley Street. On with the montage!

We were in the far north when this photo was taken. We'd got back from a trip up to Cape Reinga the night before, had packed up and left the camp site and got about 10 clicks down the road before running out of fuel. Bugger! It wasn't a total surprise. When the fuel gauge has hit empty about 100 clicks in the past, then gone past it to hit the stop about 20 clicks before the camp site, you've got a pretty good inkling that you're running low on gas the next morning. Now we can usually run the 60 litre tank down to the point where we have to fill up with 58 litres or so, but there was no such luck on that day. The petrol station was still 40 clicks south and faced with a long hitch hike, we decided to ask a farmer to come out and give us some premium rate gas. 

The previous day, and about 60 clicks north of the camp site (probably with a couple of litres left in the tank) we parked up and explored New Zealand's largest sand dunes. It was windy, sandy and steep. Doug fell over a lot. Not much more to say.

Cape Reinga, the northernmost point of New Zealand is where the Tasman Sea to the west meets the Pacific Ocean to the east with some seas that look spectacular even from our viewpoint 130 metres up. You can see a big tidal rip off the west end of the cape and the lighthouse on the peak of the headland at the end of the path. The cape lies at the end of a long peninsular with ninety mile beach (which you can drive along in a 4x4) to the west and wild coast to the east. 

One last photo JUST BECAUSE I CAN! 22 hours travel, 9,700 nautical miles away. New Zealand dude! More montage posts soon.

Catch you all soon,

Sam and Doug

A week apart

We left Pahi and drove back down to Takapuna on the North Shore, just outside central Auckland. Doug disappeared off for a day on the river with the Auckland University boys and girls, while I headed over to the outboard boating club to sit in a classroom on a super hot day and listen to how to use a radio. Not jealous at all.

Doug managed a couple of runs on the Wairoa (a fun Class III/IV), one of which didn't go so smoothly.   This video of him on Rollercoaster rapid speaks for itself...

Super smooth. It doesn't look like a nice place to be headed when you finally pop up after a couple of rolls. The undercut apparently claims quite a few swimmers, hence the rope that Doug was able to hold on to while the lads bagged him out. 

After that exciting day, Doug flew off to Sydney to hang out with his friend Joe, and I took the time to head up to see fellow blogger (and evil genius) Lauren up in Paihia. I met up with her and a local guy called Craig at a cafe in town, but was promptly whisked off to pick up some crates at the supermarket before heading up to the prize giving for an annual rugby match between Waitangi and Russel, two fierce rugby rivals from opposite sides of the water in the Bay of Islands. With Craig's car a crate of beer lighter, sober driver Sam Farrow drove over to the ferry and crossed to Russel, trophy on board for the first time in 6 years! I then hung out with Lauren, Craig and his house mate Jared for a pretty cool weekend. 

Reunited at the airport with only slight complications at one am this morning - Doug got all the way to the airport in Sydney the day before, wondered why his flight wasn't on the boards, and realised he'd got there a day too early... I was already coffee'd up by the time he texted and as such haven't had much sleep for the last two days - Doug and I are going to spend tonight in Auckland and then head down to Rotorua tomorrow for a weekend on the Kaituna and Wairoa. I will of course be official shuttle bitch for Doug and the Auckland Uni lads as my physio says that I shouldn't to anything beyond flat water for the next two weeks, minimum, and then to build it up slow. So it'll be a while before I can join Doug on the water. In return for my services as shuttle driver extraordinaire, however, I fully expect to get a free weekend on the beer. Swings and roundabouts!

Catch you all soon,

Sam and Doug.

Craig and Tanya

Craig is a chap who we met at a boat ramp in Pahi, an hour or so up route one from Auckland. We later found out that he was a landscaper by trade who moved out of Auckland, up to a farm just north of the local town, about 7 years ago. What led us to hang out a little with Craig was his V8, home built, jet boat.

Since his missus, Tanya, wasn't going to get in it, he invited Doug out for a ten minute ride. So while I sedately munched on my sandwiches, Doug roared up and down the upper reaches of Kaipara Harbour at 50 knots. You could hear the 350 chevvy engine from about 2 miles away, despite Craig assuring me (or rather Doug) that he was holding back from the top speed of 70 knots. He built the jet boat because the two successive top of the line, 850cc jet skis that he'd bought and sold previously just didn't quite cut it. Right.

Having blasted his jet boat back onto his trailer (no winch required), we drove back up to his house, on a dirt road near the local town, and I stuggled to keep up with his old jeep and trailer without slightly terrifying myself. It's a definite trend in NZ, that even if the vehicle in front of you has successfully negotiated a bend at speed, be it a 50 tonne logging truck limited to 90 but actually doing 110 or a souped up ute, it's no guarantee that you can do the same.

Once Craig had cracked us a couple of beers 'Sorry about the Ozzy beer mate, but it doesn't taste too bad really', he rolled what we assumed to be a cigarette (it wasn't) and poured his first rum and coke of many. He then proceeded to talk excitedly about his house (which had arrived on the back of a truck), his land, his fruit trees, his van, his sheep, his cattle, and eventually, his guns. All 5 of them. It was rapidly turning into the manliest day of Doug's life.

The 12 gauge Remington Gold Trigger made a hell of a bang, but Doug managed to miss Craig's peach trees. They were worth more than his life. You may also notice in the video that Craig was at this point sporting a little metallic purple pipe. Not Tobacco.

We sat and chatted in the afternoon breeze, before we made our excuses and left, rolling back down the narrow dirt track with a fresh horde of a dozen eggs, 8 lemons and a sprig of fresh parsley that Tanya insisted we take. 

NZ hospitality at it's finest.

Catch you all soon.

Sam and Doug.

Photo montage!

It's been 13 days since I popped my shoulder now (and almost as long since I last updated the blog - shocker!), but this time Doug and I are going to make sure that I rest properly before getting back on the river. Physio is booked soon too, so it shouldn't be long before the shoulder is back up to full power. It already feels much better without any physio so the signs are good. With nothing better to do, we have spent the last 2 weeks touring around the northern part of the north island - driving up the Coromandel Peninsula, heading out west to Piha and then going through Auckland and making our way up the east coast towards the Bay of Islands via Russel. Here are some pictures.

This is a shot of the beach near Cathedral Cove. You can see a cave bored through the cliff on the right hand side of the photo; that's the only way to get to the shore of the cove without getting wet. At about 30ft high and probably double the width, it's quite a spectacular entrance. It's a long walk down from the car park and according to my legs an even longer walk back uphill.

This one is to appease my Dad, who was asking for photos of the terrain. Here is some terrain. This is the main road into Coromandel from the North - steep, windy and a little too narrow. All of the 'main roads' in NZ are like this, the only guarantee that you get being that it will (mostly) be paved/sealed. The state highways are generally more forgiving but not much better. 

If you turn off the main roads however, you don't know what you're going to be presented with. Frequently it's a 'metal road', or dirt road to everyone else in the world. Again; steep, twisty and narrow is the order of the day.

They aren't always bumpy though. In fact this one could hold its own against most of the highways in NZ. Yep, that's a grader up ahead maintaing the road and I'll go on record when I say that overtaking it by pulling into the ditch it leaves on the other side of the road was one of the more 'interesting' experiences I've had since I got here.

Well, once again I'm running out of time on the internet, another photo update will come along soon.

Catch you all soon,

Sam and Doug

Rangiteiki

So, a week ago, a few days before I (Sam) popped my shoulder on the Kaituna, we headed down to Murupara, just outside Rotorua, with the aim of paddling the Rangiteiki. Leaving the camp site at 9, a massive achievement for Doug, who wasn't quite fully conscious until mid day, we drove up to the get on. This was possibly the most dangerous bit of the day, as the section of the river that we were paddling (the Jeff's Joy run) was only accessible by private forestry roads. Private forestry roads are nuts. As we trespassed along, we encountered what the guide book describes as 'high speed logging truck death', characterised by the a generally liberal attitude to speed limits and driving on their side of the road from the fully loaded 45 tonne trucks, some of which have un cut trees hanging 30ft off the back of the trailers, which of course swing into your side of the dirt track whenever they negotiate a left hand bend.

We eventually made it in one piece, and parked the van a little way up the dirt track to the river, where we were relatively sure that we could get it back out. Getting on, we had 200m or so of flat water to warm up on before dropping right in to the class IV, the first bit of which was an easy, bouldery, narrow rapid called Rock A, which has killed people in the past (just don't hit Rock A). Rock B soon followed, before we dropped through Fan Tail and then Jeff's Joy. More Class IV. On Jeff's Joy, Doug tried to eat my boat.

Mostly intact, we proceeded down the rest of the river, 8km or so of beautiful, narrow read and run class III. We dodged all the trees, got to the rafting get off, and I began the 2.5 hr hike back up to the main logging road then back down to the river to the get on! Some fun off roading later, the gear was all back in the van, and we headed back up to Rotorua to get on the Kaituna! More on that later.

Catch you all soon.

Sam and Doug.

Dislocated

No images again on this one, I am sitting in a cafe in Coromandel with about 10 minutes left on the internet, so what you're about to read is a super quick piece of speed blogging in which I hope to cover the last week or so. Apologies for the poor grammar (you won't notice the difference).

So what rivers are around Coromandel you ask? None at all, apart from a class IV run near Auckland. We're here clearly not here because of the boating then, we're here because Sam didn't listen to his body, was way too keen to go boating, and dislocated his shoulder on the Kaituna. Muppet! After initial aches and interesting crunching sensations on the first run down the Kaituna, I thought it'd be a good idea to take a few days off, which I did. But then we went out on the Rangiteiki (which was awesome) and felt good enough to go down the Kaituna again (which is also awesome). One mostly unintentional beating in a hole at the bottom of the river and out pops the shoulder and here we are!

The plan now then is to relax for a little while, take lots of paracetamol (yum) and hang out in Auckland for a little while, playing at being tourists. Auckland is also where I'm going to get some physio to sort my shoulder out once and for all.

And there it is folks - amusing videos and more in depth river reports coming soon. With some photos!

Catch you all soon,

Sam and Doug

Kaituna

So, from the Bliss Stick factory, we drove back up to Rotorua and got on the Kaituna, a one kilometre class 3/4 with a 7m waterfall on it. With enough fitness and local knowledge you can run it in less than an hour. The extreme race boys and girls do it in 6 minutes. I had to pick up some gear from a local shop, Topline Agencies.  Walking out with a Palm Torrent drysuit, some airbags and a set of Robson split paddles later, all for £600, the owner of the shop, Andi Uhl offered to join us for a quick blitz run to show us the lines.

A little over an hour later, with total saucer eyes and massive grins plastered on our faces, we blasted back up to the van on the back of Andi's truck, holding on to the boats, the van and eachother for dear life. Andi's run the Kaituna over 1800 times, and his help was invaluable! I will publicly confess that I managed to swim in an eddy on one of the easiest rapids at the end of the river after crunching my shoulder, an old injury exacerbated by terror paddling and not warming up. This called for a few days off, which we have spent resting, eating as much protein as possible and surfing in Whakatane and Mt Managanui, cool seaside towns on the pacific ocean.

Tomorrow we head back up to Rotorua, and with a shoulder which is now feeling fine, we will get back on the Kaituna to brush up a little more on the steep creeking! What fun.

Catch you all soon, and happy birthday nan!

Sam and Doug.

Bliss Stick

First of all, this blog has been up now for 20 days now and has already got (at the time of writing) 606 views. All of that without us actually doing anything interesting! Thanks for the sterling work on the refresh buttons mums.

So, as you will know if you've been reading attentively, we have spent the last 5 days out of 6 working at the Bliss Stick factory, out in the wop wops near Taihape. Charles on the right hand side is the main man. He pours, cooks and finishes all of the kayaks that come out of the factory, 3 or so per day. His wife, Coke, makes all the outfitting and does the accounts. We stepped in for a week to do all of the labour intensive stuff so that they could get on with building boats! Doug reloaded moulds and finished outfitting while I cooked back rests and seat pads all week. Take note of the boat in the picture. It's Doug's - still in the mould, still with plastic in the space of the cockpit hole! That'll be cut out by Charles.

Cracking the mould off of my boat. At this point, fresh from being spun around for 45 minutes after being taken out of the oven, the plastic is pretty darn hot. Once it cooled, I got to lift my boat out of the mould. Not many boaters can say they've done that!

Two tremendously intrepid looking chaps, two shiny new kayaks. Lots of adventures to come! We are going to drive up to Rotorua tomorrow, then we'll make our way slowly down to the South Island, paddling as much stuff as we can on the way. Looking forward to the Kaituna!

Catch you all soon,

Sam and Doug

Portside

So, Napier, apart from being quite pretty, was also WARM. We wouldn't go as far as saying it was hot, but after a few days in Taihape, warm would do just fine. Another asset to this town is the Hawke Bay Seafood Company. It's mainly a seafood wholesalers, where fishermen in the slightly smaller harbour round the coast go to sell their fish, but they also have a restaurant on site, where Doug and I bought 5 peices of fish and two (very) large portions of chips for $14 total, just over seven quid in British. Awesome!

We also saw Napier Sailing Club on the map. We popped into the office to see if we could go for a sail, and they gave us the card of Marty, who runs a sailing school called Monkey Fist out of one of their sheds. The next day we returned at 1pm, paid $25 and were told to tack a few times in the harbour to put Marty's mind at rest, before we were allowed to leave and head out into the bay - but to make sure we were back by "half three, half four, whatever".

"Now, the tide's going out there and there's plenty of offshore wind, but these things are pretty easy to right, just make sure you don't go too far out, otherwise i'll have to put a boat in to come out and look for ya." Right, thanks. Luckily we didn't lose the harbour entrance or have to practice righting the boat, but it was still good fun, sailing around on the sea.

When we weren't sailing or stuffing our faces full of seafood, we were putting a new sound system in the van. So far it consists of a new stereo and 2 new 4 inch speakers for the dash. Unfitted but sitting in the back in a box are two 6x9 speakers, because in our opinion the current ones don't have enough bass. First world problems eh. 

Ten points, by the way, to anyone who can name what type of Dinghy it is in the comments, because we haven't got a clue. 

Catch you all soon,

Sam and Doug

The Road to Napier

So, the epic drive commenced. This is only the driveway to the factory (red kayak mailbox at the end of the road on the right), but already the road is steep. At this point, we are an hour away from the nearest town, and as we were about to find out, about 200km away from the nearest gas station. Half a tank of gas in the van.

At this point it had stopped hailing, but we were in the hills and our clutch started giving up. With warnings about bad brakes ringing in our ears, shifting down through the gears to control the descents was accompanied by a horrible screeching noise whenever the clutch pedal was brought back out. About 25km before this picture was taken, the petrol gauge read zero. We drove through five tiny towns, so tiny that we passed through most of them just assuming that they were just densely packed farm houses. They looked much bigger on the map but obviously didn't have petrol stations. Each one we passed through we thought of stopping and asking for fuel, but we pressed on. This was our saviour.

After about an hour on an empty fuel gauge, we pulled into Hastings and stopped at this place. Doug put 59.26 litres into our sixty litre tank. Our sphincters relaxed. After a quick cruise around Hastings we decided to make the 20k trip over to Napier, where we stayed for the next four days. It's been our favourite town so far.

More on that when we get some internet tonight, when we return to the Bliss Stick factory to make some boats!

Catch you all soon,

Sam and Doug

Taupo to Taihape

So, we've left Taupo and it's eponymous lake and driven through the Rangipo desert to the Bliss Stick factory, near Taihape. We were greeted by Charles and Cokes' massive sound system and the cats and dogs which run around the factory, which is essentially just a big shed with a kiln and some moulds in it. You can see Charles birthing a little baby Bliss Stick here.

Charles and Coke generously let us camp out on the embarrassingly flat ground at the back of their factory for two nights. Embarrassingly flat because we got the van stuck. Twice. Here we are discussing how to get the van out with Derek, Callum and Merissa, all NZ locals who were working at the factory in exchange for cheap boats (something that we plan to do starting on Monday). What the picture doesn't portray is that it was properly baltic and we woke up to everything covered in snow in the morning.

In the meantime, before we start work on monday, we find ourselves in Napier; a long, long drive across quite steep nature reserves which our van and us didn't really enjoy. More on that next time (epic cliff hanger!)

Catch you all soon.

Sam and Doug.

Paddle Wagon

So, with the fantastic help of Des and his mates in Rotorua, we have bought ourselves a van. It's a 1991 Ford Evonovan Maxi fitted out in the back with a heater, fridge, sink and (outdoor) hot shower. It purrs like the genuine white tiger print seat covers, and works much better in the mornings than Douglas. We camped next to an almost identical one in Rotorua Thermal Springs and got chatting with the owners. Known problems with them include overheating, not starting (spark plugs) and not stopping (brake failure). It's all good then!

For $7,500 we've not done too badly. We've stayed in her two nights so far, one at a cool campsite in Rotorua with geologically heated swimming pools (a bit smelly) and another down by the Waikato River just upstream of Huka falls. Obviously we were looking for lines (left) and where to get on and off without getting caught.

Our first attempt at rigging our awning wasn't too great, you can see one of the guy lines wrapped around the front of the van, but the camp site was pretty nice, and free to stay at for the week. New Zealand knows how to treat it's campers.

Next stop for us is probably the Bliss Stick factory, a little further south than us. After that we'll probably head up north - we've heard rumours that it's not wet, rainy and cold up there and we want to check them out!

Catch you all again soon!

Douglas St

We were getting quite delirious. We'd walked around the suburbs of Auckland for about two hours by this point. Douglas was much, much too happy about this sign. The strange thing is that it hasn't worn off by this morning and he's insisted that I post this picture to the blog, threatening that he wouldn't talk to me for a week unless I did. When that didn't work, he offered me a coffee. So here it is.

We've arrived.

We've arrived in Auckland. Once the beast was burdened, it flew us over Singapore, past Australia, the Tasman Sea and finally dropped us off at Auckland International. It didn't take us long to find a pub.

The Brewery Britomat brews its own beer on site (in the vats that you can see behind the bar, and also in the adjacent tap rom). It smells good and also sells pizza. We have one more night in Auckland, before heading down to Rotorua to check out the boiling mud (which will hopefully mask Doug's toxic arm pits) and hopefully sort out a van. Psyched!

Baggage Allowance

Well, everything is just about packed, an hour before driving off to the airport. Aside from my bulging at the seams 150 litre dry bag, my hand luggage is filled with an assortment of items that I expect to come in handy for the 24 hour flight; 50 meters of nylon rope, 8 quickdraws, a pair of climbing shoes, two chalk bags, a sling and biner and a toothbrush. Expert packing Sam, expert packing.

Place Holder

Well, here it is. Photos and videos of Sam and Doug's trip to NZ coming... well, when we arrive! 3 days to go.