The Pinnacles

About a week ago we went to hike the Pinnacles.  It is about a 3ish hour hike up to the top where it is a rocky summit with some amazing views.  I had the best seat ever on the edge of one of the pinnacles which even had a foot rest.  I also explored over to a different pinnacle where there was no track.  Don't worry, Mom, it was much safer than it looks.
Check out the picts, they're great.

Epic Kayak Trip

Last week was our week long rec trip.  I posted some of the picts on picassa: http://picasaweb.google.com/dave.dayan/EpicKayakTrip#

It started off with some paintball for some of us.  It was supposed to be a club game but since there was a tournament nearby, only three other people showed up.  It was actually sweet with only 7 people playing.  It was way easier to keep track of what was going on.  Anyway, later that day we met up with everyone else in Rotorua and then headed out to our first campsite way off in the middle of nowhere.  The next morning we took a hike, and of course ended up wandering off the trail and getting lost.  But we made our way to the river that the campsite was along.  I thought the hike was going to be easy so i wore my Teva's, which in the end worked out great, as everyone else tried to stay out of the water and one by one everyone fell in.

Later that day we made our way to Lake Waikaremoana.  It is amazing that this huge lake has no houses around it and very few people.  We saw only a few other people the whole time.  The water is even clean enough to drink.
That first afternoon we got everything packed into the kayaks in the rain, but as soon as we launched it stopped raining.  Apparently the lake was 4 feet higher than last time Jon was there, and what was supposed to be our first campsite was underwater.  We paddled on and actually made it to what was supposed to be the second nights campsite.  This was a sweet place with a big hill and an inlet for swimming and snorkeling.  Since we did all the extra paddling, the second day on the lake was just a completely relaxing day with no planned activities... except for celebrating Rich and Hannah's birthdays, which were that day and the day before.  We planned on bringing two bottles of liquor, but through a minor miscommunication ended up with two vodka and two rum.  It was a bit of a sloppy night, and because of that day three was also a chill day while everyone recovered from their hangovers.  The next day though we paddled on and then went for a hike.  We went to a new campsite that night.  The following day on the way back, we went to a place on the lake where a 50 footish high waterfall is that you can actually paddle behind and through.  It was quite a beautiful place.  Then the trip ended with a trip to the polynesian spa in Rotorua.

We got back here at about 2am, and the following day I went to pick up the new volunteer, John.  We did a weed bash on wild ginger and wooly nightshade.  And we've also started getting our own spa bath setup.  We've got a big tub set up next to the gazeebo at the house.  The past couple days, we've put in some posts and have started framing up a deck to come off the gazeebo and go around the bath.  Jon has been busy with some administrative stuff recently, so it has been mostly up to me to plan how we are doing this building.  It's quite interesting since I've never really done this before, especially with leading other people to build it.  Once its done I'm sure i'll get some photos up.

This whole post might be a little disjointed... this would be because we are all watching Team America right now and I am not so good at blogging and watching at the same time.  So, bye for now.

Whats Happening

I've realized I've been pretty terrible in actually saying what's been going on aside from the few things that i specifically mentioned so far.  So lets see, starting at the house...

• We've made some new picnic tables.  I planned them out and got some people to help out.  Just yesterday we finished putting together the octagonal one which is sweet.

• Eradicated all the mistflower here, which is a foreign weed.
• Planted flax.
• Made a new garden
• Set up the Extreme Hammock!
• Built a wood box and filled it up
• cleaned out and organized all the crap under the house
• Shoveled out a pile of dirt left here and added it to the dam on the land
• Cleaned out and reorganized the garage
• Setup a tree nursery to grow native trees until they are big enough to plant on the land.
• Turned the house that we just moved in into a home.

Then on the land we've done a whole lot as well:

• Clean crap out of the river from the flood a couple months ago.  (like a once in 50 years type of flood, it is amazing to find doors and picnic tables about 2 kilometers away from where they started)
• Make a new garden and plant loads of veggies.
• Make pumpkin heaps.
• Put up a chicken house and fix up the chicken run.
• Release and mulch hundreds of trees
• Harvest flax and plan more on the land
• Dig up pohutacawa trees off the side of the road for the tree nursery
• Bash wooly nightshade, another weed from europe.
• Make shelving and clean out the containers on the land
• General clean up around the land.
• We've also set up a fishing net and caught and filleted a whole bunch of fish.  We made a smoker out of an old gutted stove and smoked thie fish which was quite tasty.

Then we also have a bunch of rec trips mixed in here.  Much of these I've mentioned already, but here's another list:

• Today we went horseback riding and hung out on the beach.
• Seakayaking to the Gannett Island, and a couple other mini trips
• Loads of snorkeling
• Whitewater rafting on the road trip south with additional picnics and beaches
• A couple forest walks out the back of the property
•  Bonfires, making american and kiwi smores.  (the kiwis dont know what they are doing, Bonesaw was right, you need to bring your own marshmellows)
• Gnome treasure hunt!  Jon and I set up a rope follow and got the volunteers to follow it all over the place while blindfolded.  It was hilarious, especially messing with them, muahaha.
• Then this saturday we are leaving for an Epic Trip! of 5 days of seakayaking on a lake and camping and hiking.  Dont know where yet...  also on the way there some of us are going paintballing.

We've also had one or two free days each week to just chill and enjoy the beauty here.  Read, play games, nap in the extreme hammock, use the interwebs (like right now!) are some of the stuff we do on these days.  So here you go, this is whats been happening.

Whitewater Rafting

So this place is not just about working, but we do some awesome recreational stuff too.  Like whitewater rafting!  The Wairoa river in NZ is some of the best rafting out there.  Or at least our guide who claimed to have rafted all over the place said it was his favorite.  This river is normally dammed up, but in order to be allowed to be dammed, they had to agree to release the dam 26 times a year just so that people can raft down it.  New Zealand is awesome like that.  It was quite thrilling with a bunch of class 4 and 5 rapids.  Our boat was me, the 5 other volunteers and two guides.  We started off learning how to control the boat and basically blindly follow our guide, Prince's, commands.  Sounded strange at first, but turned out to be quite necessary.  I was even a little scared listening to Prince talk about the rapids and how to not break yourself if you fall out or the boat flips.  Although at least for me it is comforting to know that I am stronger then most other people in the boat, and if they are doing it then I should be fine.

In the end, no one fell out (on purpose), but we definitely got thrashed around quite a bit.  Check out the picasa pics.  Then for one of the last rapids (a small one) they gave us the option to float down it without the boat.  Of course we all said yes, and then got loads of water up our noses and scraped a couple rocks... but it was totally worth it.