Quality Inn Collegiate Wanganui

Wanaganui is famous for two things - the river, and glass blowing. Due to all the rain the river was considered too high for any fun activities, and having seen the glass blowing the night before, we looked for some other interesting activities!<br><br>We ended up at Lake ...

... in trendy bars, or just the number of people. These always make me feel particularly lonely. Lonely in a crowd. I visited the Botanic Gardens. best access route to a garden yet, up a cable car. did my preffessional bit and told the gardeners that they need to fell a tree as it was showing signs of imminent collapse, don't think they believed me - bloody gardeners. I went to Te Papa, the museum for NZ basically ...

... way instead of going the same way we had entered the area. The road through the Hutt area was the usual very scenic, mountainous road, which would have brought us back onto the main road North along the coast, but autry advsied us to take a minor road later one to bring us out further North, and giving us a good view of the coastline from up in the Mountains. And Blimey, it was a very ...

... temptation to keep them on!<br><br>We dived onto the hard wooden benches as if they were the softest luxury cushions in the world, and about 7 seconds later were demolishing our lunch. At 10:30am! <br><br>No-one else joined us for about 1/2 hour, but just as we started to wonder if ...

... risen a ton and the current was really strong, so we made good time on the fourth day. There were floating carcasses everywhere in the river- dead goats, sheep, and cows floating everywhere! It was pretty gruesome. Day five we ended up suffering thru some pretty heavy headwinds, which made the paddling extremely challenging. It was just such an amazing experience to actually be challenged and forced to survive and being alone with yourself and ...

... which was described as the middle of nowhere. And it was remote. Ended up just relaxing in the lodge before having a big roast that evening and playing a couple of card games, which I made sure I won:) Julesy meanwhile got all in a tangle in twister. Very funny!

... quite viscious. Sabrina said I was weird and the whole idea was inhumane which is odd since I had no intention of putting any humans in the fight. Google was unfortunately unable to help in the discussion but nobody seemed eager to try and capture a possum and find out the answer for good, even though it would be really easy to catch one. Oh yes, and I've finished slaving ...

Monday, January 15-The sun is out this morning and we see the top of Mt. Egmont for the first time as we leave town.Good thing we got photos fast as it is soon covered in clouds again. On our way traveling south, we drive through rolling hills with agriculture and many dairy farms and sheep grazing on the hills. Tonight we stay ...

... The outcome of all this was that I went for a swim (much of which was under water) for about 50 meters. The River was beautiful and we spent most of the first hour taking in the scenery. The rapids really got going in the second half of the river - many where grade 5s. The guy teaching took charge of the boat for this part I'm glad to say. On one of the the rapids (a grade 5) we became a rescue boat! This rapid was a ...

Tongarario was our next destination, we'd decided to do some tramping so had thought about doing the Tongarario Crossing for two days. However, the weather had other ideas and as we set off it started raining. And it didn't stop, it just got a lot lot worse, poor Lee had a right nightmare trying to drive. We were on Highway 1, which is the main highway for the North Island, so it was quite busy anyway and in those conditions a bit treacherous at times. We decided just before the turn off ...