I’m back! And what a trip it was. So here it is, highlights, the sights and sounds of ‘New years at Kuratau 2005-06’.

8.45 was the time Steve was meant to pick me up. I got up quite early that day, I couldn’t sleep at all the previous night. This always happen to me when I’m looking forward to something. Like at standard 6 when my friend was going to teach me how to play Magic the Gathering or the night before the ball, and also the night before we went to Whangamata last year. Steve arrived at like 9 and I found out that the car was completely full with both Matt’s and his stuff in it. So I had to ditch some food and pack my bags all into the back seat of the car. Man Cam isn’t going to fit into this car I thought. So off we went to Cam’s house. And after some repacking we decided that there is definitely NO WAY we were going to fit 4 of us into 1 car. Cam then decided to drive to Kuratau as well. 1st stop, Rotorua. It was so crowded, we took 4.5 hours to take 5 luge rides. It was all worth it though. Many hits and crashes later (I crashed and fell off my luge, thanks Steve!), we left Rotorua for Kuratau. It was quite a scary drive there though. The rain was crazy. It was so heavy, we couldn’t see anything on the road except Cam’s tail lights. Steve was practically only looking at Cam’s lights to judge where the road was.

Quote of the day: while playing poker I said ‘I play to win!’ (and damn do I regret saying that haha, this would be the quote that everyone says in this trip).

Biscuiting was awesome! I was pretty afraid on the 1st ride though, cause I didn’t know what it was like but it was awesome. Then I had a go at waterskiing as well, man I was terrible at it. And talk about the lake, shit the water is cold! And it is cold 24/7. Almost got hypothermia when I swam to the pontoon and then I went waterskiing. Almost drowned when I swam to the pontoon as well too, I was so tired on the way back. Luckily, it was shallow enough for me to walk.

The Tirau experience… only eat pies there, do not attempt to buy anything other than pies. Matt bought an ‘egg’ sandwich there and it turned out to be a cheese sandwich haha. He then took all the cheese out and made it into a ball and gosh that ball of cheese was bigger than my fist! Then Steve bought a chicken and avocado sandwich. The chicken didn’t taste like chicken at all and the avocado was so rubbery, you could hardly bite through it. I would recommend the pies there though they were so good. On the way back, Chris bought a lolly cake; he ate half of it and then gave the other half to Steve. And midway back, Steve ‘had the shits’ and we had to make an emergency stop in the middle of nowhere. He used a random Korean restaurant toilet. Chris was not too far behind.

To be continued…