23rd -25th March; Out of Hospital School Talks and Getting Back On The Horse!

 

I awoke early in my private hospital ward, where I had a great window view and an on suit. Very cool facilities at the Wairoa Hospital I must say. The Doc came by and released me, Dave and my Mum arrived and we went and shopped for food, as it would be at least a couple of days before Dave and I got back on the water.

We drove back to the Cabin in Mahia and settled in; it was a great spot, with a main cabin and an outside room. I quickly meet the family that was hosting us, and enjoyed Dinner the local hospitality. Dave and I were quite a novelty and we ended up sitting and talking with people all over the place.

The first day back was a bit of a write off, or more to the point I needed to take it easy, the next day however, Dawn, who is the principle of Te Mahia primary school, asked us to come give a talk on our adventure to the kids, so we threw together a quick slide show and headed off to the school. We had a really fun and successful talk, completely off the cuff, and the kids and adults loved it. It lasted a couple of hours and then we were interviewed about our adventure and the spider bite evacuation by the local paper. It seems we had caused quite a stir and everyone was interested in the story of the ambulances at 3am on Tuesday. That day was gone quick with all the talking and we then sat down to a great meal with our host family, who also was most of the staff at Te Mahia School.

The following day looked good to get back on the boats and try and get around Mahia Peninsula and pull the boats up in front of where we were staying and get them of the northern side, which was a 15min drive away. The distance would be 33NM and about 10 hours. We weren’t too motivated, Dave was cautious of getting back on the horse, I was not thinking clearly and the morning was gone pretty quickly. I suddenly at one point, yelped “I don’t want to go if you are planning on camping out Dave!” as I noticed all the camping kit he had brought, and I had brought none.

 

The reality really was it was a big day, we weren’t really ready to do it, our heads weren’t yet back on the game, so we called it quits and will start early the next day, in the mean time we walked the beach for the broken paddle, and didn’t find it, though Dave did find his hand line for fishing. We headed back over to the cabin with my mother, after having a big yarn session with Dave and Margaret, who where the people whose house our Kayaks where stored at. We chatted about Birds, photography and parenting, among other things and then had to leave to go get ready for the next day of hard boating.

The weather is quite crap still, though much better than the day I went to hospital, which was the heart of the storm, the area flooded in places, big waves came in and chewed up the Dunes. Now it was just windy and the surf was getting smaller each day. Tomorrow should be an awesome day for getting the peninsula done!