Working has become quite an adventure as well as drama central for the, might I add, male pilots. You thought females created drama? Wait till you get six pilots with different agendas and personalities, then that drama. Somehow Nick and I even became part of the drama seeing as we did everything wrong and needed being told, or so we thought. No matter, all is well down under and we’ve learned to steer clear of all pilots when they’re being dramatic, which happens to be more often than not. Not all is lost though for the pilots; we do have a few who love us bloody Americans. So everything is as good as gold.
After our stressful day of doing everything wrong or again, so we thought, we headed out to Okarito for a nice relaxing day of kayaking through the peaceful lagoons. Not so. It was a painful and beautiful experience. We had a two-man kayak and together paddled around the most stunning scenery and heard every bird call, but after about an hour we were tired. Next though, we had to paddle against the tide to some more stunning scenery, which was pretty much the same as before. Most of the time we felt more like we were moving backwards instead of forwards due to our paddling against the swift tide. After an hour or so we reached our next lagoon, which was probably only 100 meters further than the first lagoon we saw.
Our hands and arms were hurting so bad. Nick’s were more than mine seeing as I got tired faster so stopped paddling half the time. Maybe that’s why we were going so slowly? Nick didn’t know this though, as I was behind him. I steered the kayak as Nick navigated. Eventually he caught and made me switch places with him so he could make sure I was paddling my fair share.
After paddling around the lagoon and lunch we headed back to shore. We could hardly paddle for longer than 10 strokes and took more breaks than was needed. The whole trip was supposed to take us under four hours, not so for us. We’re surprised we made it back at all. Once we did I fell in the mud trying to pull Nick to shore. All he did was laugh and couldn’t stop. All in all it was a wonderful experience and another relationship lesson. If we hadn’t got along and worked together we would still be paddling against the current straight into a head wind, which almost happen. So what was supposed to be a nice relaxing kayak trip was actually a four and a half hour exhausting experience. We woke up the next day with everything being sore.
The weather is beginning to turn beautiful. Not as much rain and a lot more sunshine. It’s actually been hot a few times and with Christmas only being 17 days away it’s feeling more like summer than winter, which it actually is. Nick and I are counting down the days of Christmas with a homemade paper chain. We decorated it with stickers and Christmas drawings. Holidays aren’t big in New Zealand like they are in the states, which is sad but true. We did get to decorate the company Christmas tree though. I’ll eventually decorate our room with hand drawn pictures of Santa, a Christmas tree, reindeer and anything and everything else having to do with Christmas.
We are at the beautiful Pancake rocks. It was very cool.
Mariah resting after hours of kayaking. We are just about to have lunch before our kayaking journey back to our car.
Me doing all the work as Mariah takes pictures and watches for birds.
We haven't had a place all to ourselves lately, nor have we had such a big bed. As you can see Mariah loved it!
Us at the Pancake rocks again, look at that blue water!
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