Des's Birthday

I made Des this cake for his birthday.

Paul and Jess's Wedding

Nelson

At the Center of New Zealand with Andre.

Christmas

Joey's Pics

Botanic Gardens

In the Botanic Gardens with Jeremy and Kat.

(Jeremy's Photo)

Kaikoura

I went to the NZ Molecular Ecology meeting in Kaikoura.

Fellow statistican, Raaz.

Miriam, Bry and I.
Sarah (marine biologist who knew lots about seals), Raaz, me and Bry looking at a seal colony and learning a lot about male seals.

Kayaking in the Sounds

This was my official holiday. I went kayaking and walking in the Queens Charlotte Sounds and had a great time.

We hired kayaks and set out for Blumine Island. We set of around midday and headed on up. We hit quite a strong head wind early on and so the stronger crew, Matt and Chad were miles away very quickly.

Andrew steering our kayak
Matt and Chad, about to steam off into the distance.
The view.

We made for land and swapped over so I ended up steering a kayak and Chad me helped paddle while Matt and Andrew took the other one. At this stage we had some snacks and headed back to sea. Because of the way the sounds are shaped at times we had a head wind, other times and tail wind and sometimes very little wind at all. We kayaked 25km as the crow flies and were fortunate enough to see a couple of dolphins swim past.

We arrived at our campsite as the sun was setting after more than eight hours of kayaking. Given we didn't really eat lunch, dinner was a priority as was putting up the tents. The ground was quite flat although it was quite hard. No one really noticed, it was just good to lay down.

And this was the view in the morning from Blumine Island.

Andrew had not feared so well from the day before and so we decided against the recommended trip of kayaking up the sounds further and instead opted to stay put for another night. After an early lunch we headed out in the kayaks. Because of the strong winds we went only part we around the island and landed on a very small steep beach.

There was an unmarked track starting at the beach so we decided to exercise our legs and take a short walk along it. It climbed up fairly quickly then followed the coast. After a bit we came across a set of stairs. Curious we made our way up them and found some ruins.

One our last day of kayaking we kayaked to School House Bay which is just off the main Queens Charlotte Track. There we unloaded all the gear and set up to camp for the night.

We had to drop the kayaks off at the wharf so Matt and I took a double kayak each. It turns out kayaking a double kayak is quite difficult because the rudder is so ineffective. The reason for this is the bow is so far out of the water. (See Matt below).

For day four we set ourselves an ambitious day of walking. Our first challenge was to get all the gear we had into four packs. We managed it somehow though we all had more than was desirable. The views were great and we made it in good time to Endeavour Inlet for lunch.

Andrew at the start of the track.

Chad with a full pack.

Beautiful view

Me

More good views

Unfortunately after lunch my feet got really hot. Because I hadn't developed any blisters by lunch I wrongly assumed that I would not develop them after lunch. I was oh so very wrong. Three popped blisters later I was barely able to walk. We ended up leaving my pack on the side of the track and going to a backpackers.

That bought to an end our trip. The next day we caught a boat back to Picton and drove down to Christchurch.

From the water taxi that took me, my feet and my friends back to Picton.
Thanks so much to the guys for being true champions.