Hopefully - a few photos and stories from Andrew recounting his 2006/07 adventures in New Zealand

5) December 2006: Huka Falls

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 I’ve ever done!! –

Running this waterfall was really the reason for being in Taupo, although unfortunately, on arrival we found the river to be at its highest velocity meaning it would be a suicide mission. We thus waited the whole of 3 days for the water levels 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 whitewater above the falls. The bridge was swarmed with tourists... it made it very hard focusing on the river and calming nerves with people all around whispering amongst 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 murmurs of "insane", "crazy" mixed with the numerous pats on the back and good lucks.

The best part of all this attention had to be the group of awe-struck American girls who insisted on helping us get ready and filming the whole event for us.

  a sequence of photos of Andrew running Huka Falls is given Here

4) December 2006 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 surprisingly hard to come-by in New Zealand. After this tiresome dose of retail therapy it was about 6pm, but with shiny 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 appropriately named "the rollercoaster".... our leader swam and I got a good beating in a monster stopper, got back-looped, and then experienced some unpleasant downtime pinned against a wall.

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 vegetation and a couple of good playspots

3) November 2006: Adventure Paddling

Did some 'park and huck' style paddling (a new experience). This involved a 3/4hour road trip, trekking through jungle, an abseil and a few waterfalls - great fun

2) November 2006: The Rangitikei Gorge

Our first river trip. This was considered "a pushy grade four", however levels were still reasonably high, meaning sections of grade 5.

We got a lift up with the River Valley Rafters - then let them go ahead (we wanted to scout everything and take it slowly on our firs decent).

The trip started off comfortably with grade 3, then 3/4 - a nice warm up and a good way to get used to the Mystic and river dynamics. Although it soon became fairly intense - grade 4/5 some beautiful drops and nice lines. Very exciting, bloody scary!

A few rapids from the end I had a bit of an epic - I swam.... major embarrassment, although I’m told a lot of people swim this river - which made me feel slightly better.

1) November 2006: The Beginning, River Valley Lodge

Met two guys also doing the ambassador programme with bliss-stick - we've decided that after our work at the kayak factory, we're going to buy a car together and do as many rivers around the country as we can... perfect...!