Christmas Came Early

If somebody asked me what I do all day, I'd find it really hard to tell them.  I get up early and scoff breakfast down my throat, I remain busy all day until I collapse exhausted at the end but when I list off the days activities I become stuck at number 2!!!!

Shalane and I have been working really hard on ticking off our lists but at the end of each day the lists are longer!  I even woke up this morning having extended the list in my sleep!  We've been researching places for food drops and contacting more companies for sponsorship through donation and have been shopping for a few last items, including that all important tent.  I think we still have to buy a trowel for toilet digging....nice!  But it still doesn't seem enough to fill a day, yet we collapse in our lovely, cosy hostel at the end of each day feeling like we deserve a holiday! 

We are staying at the City Garden Lodge in Auckland, which I'm loving.  We have 2 tents in the garden and use of the Granny style house with wood burning fire to lounge around in and cook.  The two tents are of course a sleeping one and a storage one as Santa Clause really did arrive early!  Santa Clause being my friend Paul, who has kindly been receiving and storing all our sponsorship gear over the last few weeks.  I met Paul in India 4 years ago and I had been promising I'd see him in New Zealand ever since.  He now lives in Auckland and took us out to dinner when we first arrived and showed us around a little.  He dropped off our boxes of gear one morning including a new camera I got sent to him and Shalane and I really did look like over excited kids!  It wasn't long before the boxes were torn open, clothes and hiking poles and collapsible bowls and all sorts were spread around the room.  Bivouac were fantastic and sent us more than we asked for and Swazi's stuff is going to keep us warm on the coldest of nights!  We later collected our stuff from macpac and had a wonderful night sleep in our new tent with new mats in new thermals!  It's safe to say that we are fully kitted out!  

So trying to get past the excitement and back to the job in hand, we set to marking our our route on a map as best we can in an attempt to see if we can manage without a GPS.  A question that has been going back and forth since we got to New Zealand.  We've spoken to some people who have used one on the trek before but the trail has become more developed since they completed it last year, so after the discovery of a great map that actually shows the trail route (or what is completed so far) and our lack of funds, we have decided to set off without one, with the scope to buying one when we pass through Auckland if we think we need to. 

After marking off the route we worked out where we might need food drops so that we can let Back Country Cuisine know where to deliver.  We found businesses in the area that may wish to help us by accepting our packages and have started to send them emails, so with any luck, we will have, at least, the north island confirmed before we leave.   

In between work we have found time to meet up with my friend Riggers (who I met in Darwin) for dinner and we even went out last night for a cheap pizza and pint!  We even dressed up and wore make up and looked like normal people.  Today, we've given ourselves a well deserved day off and plan to visit the museum to learn a little bit about New Zealand and the culture! 
If any of you know any way in which you can help  promote the trek while we are walking and don't have internet access then all your ideas, help and support will be hugely appreciated!  You will even get your name/logo (if you have one) on our websites.

My Feet Don't Touch the Ground

I arrived in Auckland at 1am Saturday morning and after finding my way to the hostel on a shuttle bus, I looked out the window, breathed in deep and already had a great feeling about New Zealand!

When I wake up in the hostel in the morning I feel like I'm in someones home.  It's a big house, with a cosy sitting room, log fire and a kitchen full of herbs and spices.  The whole house has old, dark wood floors and I feel at home.  When I meet up with Shalane, she tells me that she has been floating around in a bubble for the last few days and she doesn't seem to know if she is coming or going!  We both agree that in our heads, we had a goal of getting to Auckland - together - and now that we had accomplished that, we didn't really know where to go from there!

And so out come the lists!  Being a Virgo, list making comes as naturally to me as breathing!  I had already started 3 lists, including a list of things to ask Shalane when I see her, a list of things I need to do towards the trek and a list of things I need to buy for the trek.  So we excitedly catch up on the last few weeks, leaving Broome and our recent adventures.  Shalane shows me the super cool promo video that she made for the Indigo Foundation fund raising event taking place in October.  Check it out - Promo Video.

We sit in Starbucks and are both just so dazed and confused that we are actually in New Zealand!  We talk about the trek and get excited about the next few weeks.  The preparing and the actual starting!  We talk about the possibility of visiting the community in the Solomon Islands and what our plans are after the trek.  Shalane decides to come to my hostel and we put the tent up in the garden to save some money.  For me it was more that I needed to toughen up again after being pampered at home for a month!  Moments after we put the tent up Shalane mentions that the floor seems to be feeling a little damp and before long we realise that the whole floor has become un-waterproof since Broome!  As Auckland has recently had some heavy rain, the ground was really wet so we lay a few bin bags down and sleep in there for the night!  We manage to stay pretty dry all night but when we awake in the morning, realise that the outer shell of the tent is also leaking a little and we both start to panic!  We are now onto our 4th night and with a little hope and a lot of plastic bags we are doing ok!


Shalane calls the company that the tent is from back home in Canada and they tell her they will exchange not problem.  Phew!  Oh but they have non in stock until February!  We then decide to walk around the main outdoor shops and ask there advice, and just as I like it, we get different information in each story, ranging from "yeah, just spray it with some of this and it will be fine", to "you could send it off to this repair place and see what they say", to "nope! it's not possible, you can't fix it".  After looking at prices of lightweight, waterproof tents of the same standard and seeing price tags of $800, we start to panic slightly!  It was only in Macpac, the last shop we go in that things start looking up.  They guy calls the tent repair company that they use who explain they would not want to take responsibility for it as we are doing a trek on such a big scale but they do have  sale on!  The perfect tent for half price!  Macpac to the rescue!  We had a chuckle to ourselves!  There we are, about to embark on the outdoor adventure of our lives and we nearly didn't have a waterproof tent - just a minor detail!

 So on with more fun!  My birthday turned into a very well planned shopping day with a morning of price researching, a lovely lunch bought for me by Shalane and Riggers (a friend I met in Darwin last year) followed by an afternoon of buying!  So with the wallet hurting and the tent bulging at the seams with purchases, all we are waiting for now is Santa to arrive.  Santa of course is Paul Shadboult, our saviour!   Paul, I met in India 4 years ago and with 4 years of promising to see him in New Zealand I finally make it.  He has been amazingly helpful from the start, sending us info, links, letting us post all our sponsor gear to his address, answering all my questions, taking us out for dinner when we arrived.  He has all our gear from the sponsors in his lock up and it really will feel like Christmas when he drops it off, we can't wait!

In the meantime we've been planning!  The food drops and route marking on maps has began.  It's hard to know what we will need in way of maps so as we both stumble into the final preparations blind, we hope that our laid back "she'll be 'right" Ozzie attitude will still get us through this even though we are across the water!

The next step is the gear testing practise trip!

LET THE ADVENTURES BEGIN!

Ok, so now I have my visa I can tell you what a complete nightmare the last few months have been for me!  Not only have I jumped through the ever moving hoops but I've been given hope then had it taken away, I've had fun at home but been constantly thinking about the trek, but worst of all, not being able to get excited about something this huge was like an ancient torture!  All the ingredients were there.....the support from friends, the exciting marketing and receiving sponsors, hearing exciting updates from Shalane but all I could think was, yeah great!  But now, with 3 months of restrained excitement about to explode, I am going to have to make this the shortest post in history, get out this library and bounce, sing, shout and dance all the way home to break the news to my poor mother!

Now I can really say, with all meaning and heart -  Watch this space for real, nitty, gritty updates people!!!


WHOOOOOPPPP WHHOOOOOOOPPP!