WRC part III

Today was the best day for being out on the water yet, despite the morning rain and afternoon showers. Actually, this place looks and feels more at home when it rains. The heavy rain clouds held up and suspended in the hilltops of the dense impenetrable rainforest with the lichen, moss covered cliffs falling straight into the rain drop covered river all seem to blend together effortlessly in the wet. The colours become more vivid and the scenery comes alive with cascading waterfalls and gushing side streams. Anyway, tried my best to describe it. The effort of paddling the beast of a canoe eased up today and managed to find a rhythm that was sustainable for all of the day bar the last hour which again became a bit of a slog but we're currently pitched with a view. Check out the photo. Makes the days efforts worthwhile. Day 4 over, 3 more to go. Cheers

WRC continued...

We're at the end of the third day on the river and have cracked open a bottle of merlot and set up a camp fire together. Out on the river the level is low and so the flow is slow with more distance between the rapids but it's still great to be outside all day following a forever changing horizon. To be fair, the scenery has got more dramatic as the river narrows and the embankments either side of us rear up as cliffs giving a canyon feel. However, it is pretty hard to keep motivated at times when paddling a whale of a canoe that seems to push through the water as opposed to cut or slice but we're making progress and are 103km into the journey. Tomorrow we'll visit the Bridge to Nowhere and carry on to Ngaporo to complete a 36km day. Adios people! Goodnight.

Wanganui River Paddle

After an unscheduled 3 day rest in Taumaranui, due to having to book the river trip 2 weeks in advance and being slightly ahead of schedule, we were back on our way today. We traded in our backpacks, walking poles and boots for waterproof storage barrels, paddles and a  canadian style open canoe! Having to have to prebook campsites along the river in advance we set off at 11.30am knowing our first stretch of river was to be 35km. After doing a couple of turns to get used to the canoe and realise how docile yet powerful the beast was we were straight into our first set of rapids. It's primarily a grade 1 river so nothing too crazy but enough to get the adrenaline gland oozing and after hitting standing waves and bouncing of a rock garden we realised the canoe is also bomb proof! About 20 sets of sizeable rapids followed over the 35km. A couple of which were quite hard to read and required portage when we run aground. My favourite one being the standing wave that threw the top of the canoe up into the air and then crashed back down completely drenching only Emily! However, wasn't laughing for too long as on another rapid a whole torrent of water hit us from the side shocking and saturating me at the same time. A fun day was had. Another 6 more to go..........if we make it!

Thinking of you two Frenchies!

Hey Banette & Chris, hope you guys are all good and loving living it up! Can't wait to see you both in the South West! Might stick around for a while and get down to Grand Plage, as we all know, that's where the surf's at ;)

Te Araroans!

The blog has been a little slack recently, more like, I've been a little slack with the blog recently. I've not really been keeping on top of getting the tablet charged up. Anyway, yesterday we hit the 1000km marker which means were officially 1/3 of the way through the course! We're resting up in Taumauranui for a couple of days before setting off on the Canadian style open canoes down the wanganui river. Last night we checked into the local camp ground and stumbled across more of these strange long distance walkers (I've come to the decision were more like glorified tramps).

From left to right:

Emily, Kelsey, Will (UK), Rajiv, Emily, Me, Dean (NZ), Cisco (US)

Others in town but not in the photo:

Roadrunner (US), Mel, Sezz, Luigi (NZ), Sam (NZ)

That's 13 of us! We've just left the elf kingdom, now the fellowship continues on to wanganui!

Think wisely before buying Salomon!

Ok, so it's a little naieve to think that one pair of boots will make the entire distance but after only 800km my no longer waterproof boots have split. Buying boots was a complete minefield with so many options available so i put my trust in a global brand after having owned a pair of their trail runners before. For the outer material to have split and having no foot ailments or injuries i automatically assume it's the fault of the design/material of the boot and so expect some help from Salomon. However, this has only bred disappointment after Salomon US put me in touch with Salomon OZ who put me in touch with Salomon UK just to find out that Salomon don't have a dedicated customer service team and so cannot help me! They only deal with shops and not the end user so I'm expected to send my boots back to gooutdoors in the UK and then wait for up to 4 weeks for my case to be assessed and if they provide new boots they'll post some back out to me! That's 6-8 weeks downtime! What do i do? Stop the adventure because of faulty boots? Of course not, I'll carry on walking and risk not being able to get refund because of their archaic business strategy. Think wisely before buying Salomon unless you do all of your adventures close to the shop where you buy their equipment from. Other global outdoor brands have moved with the times and realise that being flexible and looking after the customer is of paramount importance so with that in mind, goodbye Salomon you have lost a valued customer and i will do my utmost to inform others of your weaknesses.

Now that I've got your attention!

http://www.everydayhero.co.nz/philip_taylor

With so much effort going into our walk, me and Emily want other people to benefit so we're aiming to raise $1500 (only a mere 770GBP)  by the time we get to Bluff in April for the charity that Emily used to work for, Childfund.

To try and encourage donations, so you can all point and laugh, I'll continue to grow my beard as long as donations keep rolling in.

So please, give a little or give alot, but give something.

http://www.everydayhero.co.nz/philip_taylor

Thanks,

Phil & Emily

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