Trees

Sooo, yesterday rained, it poured and it thundered. Thus, the weather prevented us from our planned activity. So, instead we visited the black sand beach by our campsite and watched, amused and horrified, as surfers threw themselves about on the very high waves in the rain and the cold. Crazy. It reminded me of the black sand beach in Kawhia - so, so soft and with  purple tint.
Anyway, luckily, today dawned bright and sunny so we set off to Tree Adventures!
After driving through the dense, dark pine forest we arrived and kitted up in harnesses and helmets. We were appointed a practice session leader and joined up with a group of giddy ladies on a hen party trip to learn the basics...and find out how to stay alive high above the ground!
Once we had passed the practice course, we were released on the rest. Being us, we had decided to do all nine of the courses, each getting harder and higher. The courses started out about 8m above the ground and the last one was about 20m up. They were composed of collections of zip wires, swinging logs, various formations of walking wires, swings into giant rope nets and tunnels.

By the time we got to course 8 (the hardest physical course, 9 being more about the psyche-out aspect) we were tired but confident in our ability to leap across the void onto precariously strung up bits of wood, to crawl through madly swinging tunnels of slatted wood and to zip accross large open spaces on tarzan swings or surfboards strung up on wires.

 However, this course opened up a whole new level of exhertion, starting with a climb over a slack rope net (hard), then an attempt at the monkey bars. Now, both of us are absolute ninjas where monkey bars are usually concerned, but these were rope bars, they were high above our platform (which was, in turn very high above the ground) and so we both ended up just dragging ourselves along it...only to find the next challenge, which was to cross the gap between platforms on a sloth rope.

 


To make things easier for myself (if only!) I managed to do this backwards, which was highly painful, uncomfy and nerve-wracking. I almost ended up stuck on it as I couldn't see the platform I was trying to stand on due to facing the wrong way. Doh. Alex managed it fine, we continued on to rope swings into a giant net.

 Once we had managed to complete the whole forest of activities, we ate a muffin each in reward. I have to stop paying people to put me into bizarre situations. Although, hanging upside down on a long zip wire careering through the forest? Worth it.
We drove on and through Auckland again, in preperation for our relinquishing of Newt back to the Spaceship HQ tomorrow, in Penrose. We have spent the evening clearing out the car, packing and tidying up. We're chucking out anything unneccessary, as well as trying to find a way to pack that somehow makes things lighter...