Kayak School! It sounds so funny. But it was definitely the highlight of the trip so far. I'll mention again just how different whitewater kayaks are compared to ocean kayaks. You really need some kind of training to learn how to do this. And I'll mention again just how incredibly hard it is to do. Among other things, I learned:

• Whitewater boats are completely different than ocean boats. It's nearly impossible to paddle a whitewater boat in a straight line. It's all about turning and using edges, similar to skiing. You almost never ski straight down hill.
• Whitewater kayaking has almost nothing to do w/ paddling down the river. Yeah, you do that, but it's really all about catching eddies (stopping quickly mid-rapid to park in still water behind rocks), using waves and techniques to go across a swift current, or even up it, rather than down it, using eddies to move upstream, staying stationary by surfing in waves and holes, and generally maintaining complete control and *not* being washed downstream while a river is moving along swiftly underneath your boat. Just floating down a stream is for river rafts.
• Whitewater kayaking has almost nothing to do with your arms and everything to do with your torso, hips, legs. The paddling motion mostly comes from your torso and legs. The arms just hold the paddle. You always lean down stream, lifting the edge of your boat against the current. Very counter-intuitive. Every cell in your body wants to lean upstream, into the current (like leaning into the wind). But it's like skiing. If you ski down hill and lean down hill (i.e. the direction that stuff is coming at you) you edge will catch and over you go. Kayaks have edges that work the same way.
• When you cross an eddie-line, water is suddenly moving in the opposite direction and if you don't change the way you are leaning at just the right time, then you catch an edge and over you go, in nice flat water. I tend to do this a *lot*.
• Mother nature wants your boat upside-down, and wants to use your torso as a keel. You, of course, want to be right-side up... and breathe.
• Rolling yourself back up while sealed in the kayak with a neoprene spray-skirt is tough to do in a pool and takes a while to learn to do reliably. Harder to do when going down rapids. It's mostly in your body. But not twisting juuuust right, or having your head turned wrong, or a slightly bad angle while holding the paddle can screw up your roll and back upside down. When you do everything correctly, you're up before you know it. This is rare for me. It's a lot easier to do on the right side than the left.
• When your roll fails too many times and you can't get up, your body's need for air causes you to pull off the spray skirt and climb out of the boat. This is called "going for a swim." The boat fills w/ water and must be taken ashore and drained. It's very embarrassing. If you "swim" in rapids you absolutely must do so while holding on to both your boat and your paddle. Challenging.
• You can get from one bank to the other across a swift current with only two paddle strokes if you do it ... just the way Sootie tells you to.
If you don't, you'll end up a few hundred feet down stream.
• A class 2 river -- a real yawner in a river raft -- can kick your butt when you're in a kayak. The upside is that the chances of drowning in a class 2 river are almost nil.
• Being pinned upside-down against a rock, even in a light current, is scary enough to keep you awake at night. Getting out of said situation, without having to "swim" can make you feel like a million bucks.

I can't say enough good things about The New Zealand Kayak School. The grounds alone were amazing and the two pics above don't do it justice. 180 degree + views of an amazing valley where several rivers come together. The lodge is brand-new and super-nice. The total cost was about US$550 and I haven't spent better money in a while. Everything from the lodging to equipment to instruction was top rate. It's rare to see people with such talent *and* understanding of the components of what they do *and* the ability to teach it so well. This goes for Mic the owner but especially Sootie, our instructor -- a true teacher and all around amazing guy. Definitely one of those "complex characters" that no good book or good kayaking experience would be any good without...

There weren't that many river pics. To get what I got, I had to trust my camera to a dry bag which would be completely submerged when I flipped and had to swim, which did happen. Dry bags work great! To get pics, I had to park in an eddie, take the camera out and hope I stayed upright.

above: Martin comes down the first rapid. Malika is there to assist if he goes over and can't get back up.

above: indeed, he goes over. He could have been "rescued" (Malika would have helped him), but instead he pulls out and "swims" as this was our first day on the river. When you swim, you have to go to shore and drain your boat.

above left: Malika, fearless co-instructor (w/ Martin draining his boat in the background). above right: Amy had strong intentions of not rolling.

Sootie (the instructor, above-left) took Stephen (from Ireland) and I under his wing for a bit. This doesn't look big, but it was really scary. The idea was to be able to paddle back and forth across this without being washed down stream. The idea was really to be able to sit on top of this wave and surf it. Sootie could do it all day long. Stephen and I managed it for at best 20 seconds or so. (above right, note Stephen is facing up stream, soon to be surfing on the wave to his right).

Sand Flies I'd never really encountered these things before. Between these and mosquitoes whose bites itch for 2-3 days (as opposed to just going away in a few hours) and all the water that makes keeping anything like Deet on your skin impossible, I was feeling pretty chewed up. The mosquitoes seemed avoidable, but the sand files would swarm around you sometimes. On the river was the worst as you had both hands on the paddle -- they're slow and easy to kill, but there is strength in numbers....

Christchurch is the largest city on the South Island. Everyone seems to love to hate it. Me too. It was far more endearing thirteen years ago when I was here for New Year's Eve -- Change-Ringing in the Cathedral all day and a big party in the town square all night.

Anyway, without a functioning computer things go badly for me income-wise and they go badly for clients when it comes to getting stuff done. My Sony Vaio -- my broken Sony Vaio, under warranty that they wouldn't fix here, is still usable, but not without a bit of frustration. So, it was time for me to learn a nasty lesson about fedex-ing computers internationally.

To make a long story short, the laptop got held up in customs, and Fed Ex did a piss-poor job of notifying me and furthermore continually would *not* answer the phone either when I called or when other FedEx people tried to call them. So I hung out in Christchurch while this got resolved. I got a lot of work done, as I actually found a backpackers w/ wireless and also managed to often crash a fancy hotel w/ wireless and listening to some really great jazz bands play in the lobby.

Oh -- and the other thing that wasn't so fun about Christchurch is that I had my car broken into. On the good side, there was a sign in the place I was staying in to not leave valuables in the car, so I didn't. But I did leave my sleeping bag, jacket/fleece, script sunglasses, meds and other sundry items (even the mosquito net!) in the car, which they went after. They may have been shooting for the bottom of the barrel, but at least they didn't damage the car. I decided not to replace the stuff as it's near the end of the trip and even w/ the exchange rate, this stuff would be more than 1.5 to 1.75 times as much to buy here.

I returned to Murchison for the Kayak Festival and to do some more paddling. I was far better prepared to deal with the sand flies (but still took some nasty hits on the face). On a paddle trip I met Nichola, from England and a 15-year veteran Kayaker who had an ear-infection that was affecting what she could do. She'd recently been river-kayaking in Nepal (yes, they load their boats on planes / busses / tut-tuts, etc). Truly inspiring-life-goal kind of stuff for me. Anyway, she was having a similar experience to mine in NZ when it came to meeting people, the kind of people you meet, etc. Very validating to hear it all from someone else that had been to similar places that I'd been. We talked a lot which was nice for a change and went to watch some of the Kayak events.

above left: again, it's not just about going down stream. This is a slolom course -- the current is flowing (swiftly!) towards the left. The racers have to go upstream through the gate on the left (9) and then cross the rapid to make the downstream gate on the right (10). This is only possible by using the wave just to the right of the 9 gate.

I talked her into taking me down a river. She'd recently paddled down the river and over the waterfall featured in the BP 4.2 Rotonomo section, so trusting her w/ my kayaker-newbie life seemed like a safe bet. We talked to Sootie and he said that I could make it down the "Buller Earthquake Run" (a lake at the top was formed by an earthquake-caused landslide). It was normally a class-3 to 4 but the water was low.

There are no pictures. Just some fun drawings from a book that Nichola gave me (which is a treasure in itself). Suffice it to say that it was easily the scariest thing that I've ever done in my life. Low, my ass. It was huge. Four lanes wide, deep and fast. Try sitting on the ground in front of a small SUV and imagine it's a wave of rushing water and you are paddling over it in something that makes skate-boards and windsurfers seem dead-stable and you're trying not to flip. "Big and Bouncy" they call that (and it's actually not that bad compared to other things):

There's a lot of talk about "hydraulics." A hydraulic is where you have a lot of water pouring over a drop, creating a deep hole. The water goes down underneath, pops back up down stream a bit and you end up with a lot of water pouring back upstream into the hole. A big recirculation that can be hard to get out of, whether you manage to stay on top or you're "swimming". The effect is, at least on the surface, a place where you have water rushing in from the upstream side and water rushing in from the downstream side, meeting in a place where everything goes straight down. I managed to have a chance to accidentally paddle into one of these things. Going in, I saw it for what it was, didn't know that I was supposed to lean forward going in, but apparently did anyway, and then w/ Nichola yelling "Paddle -- PADDLE HARD!" paddled like hell to get out the downstream side. Jeez, those things really grab you and try to hold you in. But no rescue rope needed.

It was extra scary because Nichola had never done that river before, so there were plenty of surprises for both of us (she always went first and offered a *lot* of guidance). I did really well if I say so myself -- only flipped at one eddie line--nice, flat, friendly water (just moving in two different directions). Intention was everything and I just didn't want to flip in the fast stuff. Technically speaking, no "drama" -- no rescues, no swimming through rapids, no loosing boats & paddles. We just "cruised" it -- no surfing waves, cutting across rapids, etc. Just went straight down like river rafts do. We were short on time. But I was also terrified, to the point when we were done, I couldn't say that it was fun. Well, it was. It really was. But it wasn't. I'm really looking forward to going back to class-2 rivers for a while. But I'm glad I did it. A real confidence booster.

next: BP4.5 Oz ...