There is no place like home and my time here in New Zealand is nearing its end as summer disapears to the other side of the world. The simplicity of watching the sun go down on the West Coast of NZ is pretty awesome and I am going to miss it greatly on my departure to the far lands. I am currently trying to finish off assignments and make final bookings for my adventures alongside a bit of surfing and Suping. Here is a little edit of my home kayak run on the Kaituna that Luuka took!11th of May I will be boarding my flight to the United States of America! Yeaaaa. Peace out NZ!
Heavy rain warnings for the Eastern areas of the North Island have been on the news all week. On Thursday night we got the call from Brendan, Willz and Tyler to say that it was all on! So Ryan and I rallied over to the meet the others and set up camp at the take out- down Makaretu Road (Around 70km from Gisbourne, just after you go through Matawai, road on the right). Good Friday came and we were up nice and early to seize the day. We had a solid crew of 7- Tyler Fox, Brendan Bayley, Willz Martin, Ryan Lucas, Kendal, Drew and myself. We were all pretty amped and ready to explore the Maretu River, one that has not been kayaked before. Tyler had done his homework and google earthed the river to checkout the descent, which looked impressive, so we were all fired up for a good day on the river! The first section was loaded with easy slides and a few boulder gardens. These then led into some steeper sections of slides and drops. There was one long gorge section that we had to portage as it was unrunable and not smooth. We then carried on to find a perfect 15foot waterfall, we all ran it a few times as it was so nice! This was followed by a massive slide/drop that looked super knarley and quite full on. Noone ran it as it did not look like it went, maybe with more water...but only maybe. After portaging the big one we came across a nice 25foot waterfall, it was another beauty! We then carried on to find a lot more sweet slides and fun rapids. It took us 6hours to do the whole descent (10km in length) and the shuttle took a good 2hours as well. It was an epic day on the river though and well worth it! A totally sick run that I hope gets done again.Here are some pictures and videos from the mission.
The next day Willz, Ryan and I tried to walk in to another run that we had heard about. We hiked across paddocks and around bush for 2hours before realising we were on the wrong track! We had started late and did not have time on our side so were left to abandon the mission and paddle out on class 2.
The last few weeks I have been trying to get in as much Uni work as possible before I head away overseas in mid May to California! Work doing kayak instruction for high schools and hostessing on the yacht back on Lake Rotoiti keep coming up however and this makes it hard to get ahead in school. So last weekend Mike Dawson and I cruised along to the NZ SUP Nationals at Takapuna Beach on the North Shore of Auckland. We were representing Pau-Hana a Hawaiian SUP brand and the people that import the boards here in New Zealand are totally awesome! I am super stoked on the Oahu Surf Board that they have hooked me up with! So racing! This was Mike and I's first SUP race and we both found it quite interesting. There were only 3woman so we had to race the men and I finished after my 2nd heat in 3rd out of the three woman. I was a bit dissapointed as they did not hold a proper Womans Final and I never got to properly race the other chicks. I found the event organisation not very informative and the event as a whole was not ran very smoothly. Was stoked to be there representing Pau-Hana though!
Here is a really sweet edit put together by Sam Ricketts of his summer here in NZD! I paddled a bit with Ricketts this summer and there are some shots from one of our trips down the lower gorges. He is a charger!
