Silly Billies Return to Roam

Unfortunately this post has no pictures (other than a few I stole from the website) because a week after the race during TWALK Chris decided to take the camera for a swim......we hadn't downloaded the photos at that point... After an extremely busy term at school it was time for Easter and for most people, a nice relaxing 2 week holiday. Somehow things don't often work out like this for me, as I had decided to join a team to race in the Godzone Adventure Race - a 5 day race starting in Queenstown, New Zealand. Leading up to the race things were hectic - Chris was also racing for his team Seagate and he was busy trying to organise himself and me. We had stuff all over Chris's parents house, bike boxes and paddle gear were exploding out the door! Meanwhile I was desperately typing up thousand word essays in amoungst thinking about what food I could possibly eat for 5 days and what shoes should I wear!?! Easter Friday came and Chris had already headed down south ...

We've been back in New Zealand for 5 months now and I haven't managed a single post! The shame! The trouble is not lack of fun trips to write about, it's lack of time afterwards to do it! I have started studying again and seem to find zero spare seconds in my day. Nevertheless, I am determined to do some trip posts again. Since Christmas there have been several 'highlight' trips, one being a 5 day sea kayak adventure we did in Marlborough Sounds, another was a week's mountain bike orienteering carnival down in central Otago. But the one which I really want to write about on here was an amazing trip I did up Cloudy Peak with my friends Grieg and Clare. It was the same weekend as Sprint theBays Orienteering up North, which Chris had decided to do. We decided we needed to do a really good trip to make him jealous. We had a three day weekend, and I foolishly left Greig entirely in charge of the trip planning without paying the slightest attention to what he had in m...

The annual World Adventure Race Champs - this time in Western Tasmania - had come around again and always seems to excite and frustrate those of us who follow these mad races. Because I am writing this well after the event it is impossible for the outcome not to flavour my post - those of you who followed the race online will understand. We weren't really able to follow the race anyway, there was a strict "no spectators allowed" rule. So Viv, Karin and I decided to follow the general route of the course by car and enjoy some great camping and picnicking along the way, catching up with the race if and when possible. I would have liked to post during the race, but this part of Tasmania is very sparsely populated and so there was virtually no internet access. The race started in Burnie at 9am, as the teams paddled out into the sparkling sea on inflatable kayaks and round the beautiful coastline to Penguin. On Burnie beach minutes before the race start We saw the racers ...

We felt right at home flying into Tasmania, over green pastures and small sunny towns. After landing in Launceston airport we rented a hire car and made a beeline for the local bakery and a delicious vegie pie! Such a delicious pastry and so unattainable in the rest of the world (-: We took our car into the Walls of Jerusalem National Park, which backs on to the well known Cradle Mountain NP. We had two days to fill in before the rest of Chris's adventure racing team arrived - so we decided to head into the bush for an overnight tramp. The fog was hanging very low and it felt like rain was on its way as we wound up through the bush, passing through Eucalyptus forest filled with amazing tree ferns! Chris amongst the ferns We made our way up to Chapter lake on a very small and forgotten track. The lake is beautiful, densely crowded by thick bush with delicate falls cascading off a small rock outcrop. We had a little feast to cook up - including some good old corn-on-the-cob. A ve...

Arriving in China We flew to Beijing Airport and then took a domestic flight with Air China to Kunming. On the flight we were served this very strange looking fruit – white with little black spots like a slice of dalmatian dog! We chuckled about the weird and wonderful things ahead of us (we later found out this peculiar and tasty thing was a dragon-fruit). After a long taxi ride in rush hour traffic through Kunming we caught a rumpty bus to take us a further 4.5 hours to Dali where Matt and Lara live. Due to a series of unfortunate events they were currently at the hospital in Hong Kong, but we knew our friend Joe would be at their place. Sunset from Dali Communicating with drivers was pretty challenging, but we did finally find ourselves in Dali old town around midnight. Lugging our gear up the hill we located Matt and Lara's on the university campus with the help of Joe's detailed instructions and it was a great thing to yell out “Joe” and see a familiar face pop out...