New Year.....New Challenges...

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January was an interesting month, full of challenges of a variety of different natures. Two days after New Year, when i had 4 days off (two regular and two holiday) i got a rather flustered text from friend Amie saying she wanted to meet me in town asap. With no idea what was going on i agreed, prayed fervently that whatever was wrong would somehow turn out ok and that i could do some small thing to help, and set off. On the half hour drive in i went through all possible options from someone in her familyback home hurt or killed to being sacked from her job, but really had no clue what it could be. The thought did briefly enter my mind that, Amie being Amie, she could be being a bit over dramatic about something minor, but i quickly dismissed that as unfair. Feeling very nervous i met up with her outside a store, to find that her big trauma was that her host family's dairy farm manager had quit so she had to go over to the West Coast to milk for a week or two until they found a replacement! So as it turns out she WAS being over dramatic! The situation was fairly complicated and seemed to be stressing her host parents out a lot, so as i am fairly experienced in dairy operations i offered to go over with her for 3 days to help out. With no phone signal over there we couldnt tell them that i was coming but i got a warm reception and they were very glad of an extra pair of hands. Despite the stress and all the weird stuff this guy was doing - taking the keys to the motorbikes, putting locks on everything, opening gates and letting the cows escape and even putting dairy acid in people's gumboots - we actually had a really good time and i learnt a lot about a very different dairy set up. The boss was insistent that we didnt work too hard so on the Sunday Amie and i went kayaking, with the intention to cross the lake and head down the river to a waterfall. Unfortunately i didnt do so well with the current and light winds making the river kayak very difficult to steer. After capsising 3 times i decided it was best if i walked around the edge of the lake while she paddled the surf-ski (like an open kayak with grooves underneath to cross waves). We got to the river by by then things were getting difficult for me and after falling into a creek and cutting up my arms and hands on the tussock grass i grabbed onto we decided to call it a day. To get back to the road we swapped over so i could have a go at paddling and it was a lot easier on the surfski. Amie, who had been mocking me for not being able to paddle and said helpful things like, "just paddle a bit" or "steer it a bit more", now found walking in the mud and tussock not so easy. Despite being a bit bloody i hadnt actually minded the challenge of walking around the edge, but pretty soon Amie lost her croc sandal in the mud, which then snapped when she pulled it out, and there the smile faded. We hauled the boats onto the beach and started to walk back to the farm. Quite a few cars passed us but unsurprisingly none wanted to pick up two very wet girls! In the end the guys came to pick us up and we rode back to the farm on the back of the ute.
Being the vet-to-be in residence i offered to dehorn and worm all the calves for them (a job that should have been done when they were about 10 days old rather than 7 months old!) so Amie and i went down to fetch them up. Calves being what they are, with no real herd instinct, they scattered when Amie made them run so we had to spend an extra hour fetching them all back from 5 different paddocks. THankfully they crossed the rivers well and we soon had them all in the yard. Drenching was fine, but we did notice that we only had 72 instead of 90 so goodness only knows what the manager had done with the rest. Dehorning was not so easy as the calves were bigger and so were their horn buds, and we had no calf crush to hold them in. After about 2 hours of manhandling them in different positions we decided it was just taking far too long and was too stressful for the animals so we gave up. I think they got the vet out in the end to sedate them to make it easier. I did all the milkings for 3 days and taught them a lot about herd health and management as Amie's host family are not dairy farmers at all and have their own crop farm. I had volunteered for the job and really enjoyed myself and was glad to help, but they insisted on paying me $200 for my efforts!

It being January, work on the farm was reduced to the twice-daily milking, endless thistle spraying (some of which were now 4 feet tall!) and picking rocks out of the paddocks = pretty dull. But we did finish earlier in the day which made more room for a social life. I had been spending a lot more time with Amie (before she went off to the west coast) and Anna and Emma but around this time a lot of people realised that Emma had been gossiping endlessly about us all and spreading totally false rumours, giving her opinion or very biased account of events that had nothing to do with her. THis created real friction in the group and made things very uncomfortable as no-one really wanted to confront her about it. Things came to a head after new year when she started spending more and more time with my housemate James, and ignoring everyone else! The three of them came over for tea one evening but James and Emma spent the whole time flirting, making everyone else feel like a gooseberry, especially knowing that James had a girlfriend in England at the time. I had talked to James before about being a Christian and some of the things i believed in that might differ between us, but after Emma stayed over i felt i had to tell him that i didnt really want it to happen again as it wasnt appropriate and put me in a difficult position regarding his girlfriend and made me feel uncomfortable as Emma pretty much ignored me whenever he was around. He took this well and understood, and said as it was my house too it shouldnt be made to feel that way. We had a really good talk and he was totally fine about it, but when Emma found out she took it as a personal insult and hasnt spoken to me since! I did everything i could to sort it out, even apologising incase i had offended her (which i dont think i did) but she never replied to my texts or calls. I have talked to Anna about it lots and she says there is nothing else i can do and its just a shame its ended our friendship. But as i said before she is losing friends left and right with her gossiping so i seem to be just another one in the statistics! I am very glad that it didnt ruin my friendship with James though.

After a week or so they found someone to help Amie out on the dairy farm so that the rest of them could come home for the harvest, but after only a week they had had several arguments and Amie spent the weekend at mine complaining about the way he talked to her and treated her. WE had a good talk about it and i reminded her of how stressed everyone was by the situation so that they may not have the patience or tollerance they would normally have, and that she was having to live and work with this guy on their own so there was more likely to be friction. We discussed ways of staying calm, diffusing things and giving each other space, but having returned to the farm on the Sunday evening, she was back by Monday afternoon having had another row and saying she wasnt going back and wanted to go home. James and i managed to persuade her not to do that, and after 2 days of discussions (she stayed at ours in the meantime) calmed her down enough to go back and give it another try. Because i had been over there and milked etc and i knew her host family fairly well i was in the ideal position the help but didnt want to get involved in their business and felt that Amie should deal with it herself where possible. She can be very hot headed (she has red hair!) but in the end she sorted it out and is now quite enjoying harvest and only has to go milking on odd weekends. All this made things a little uncomfortable for me as i went to dinner with her host family to say goodbye. They were hoping Amie would come too so they could sort things out but she changed her mind at the last minute. We still had a really nice evening and they are really great people, the kind i would gladly visit on a return trip.

So the last weekend off came and we did it in style, going whitewater rafting on the Rangitata River. The base is only about half an hour's drive from the farm so i did a tour of the district and picked everyone up and met the rest of the guys, 25 of us in all, including 2 from way down south, when we got there. it was a great day for it - beautiful blue skies and nice and warm. THey provided a sandwich and salad lunch before kitting us out in thermals (one size does NOT fit all!), long-john style wetsuits, jackets (which i didnt bother wearing) booties, buoyancy aids and helmets. We were pretty toasty in all that gear but it was at least clean and fairly comfortable. They day's motto was, "there is no 'p' in wetsuit, and thats the way it should stay!". After a quick busride to the start, my crew was first on the water, consisting of Anna, Amie and I, Maxine and Tom from down south plus Jen and Fay from the Kiwi Experience tour - by sheer coincindence the 7 of us plus guide Jason were all Poms except for Maxine. We started out with introductions and games, learnt the paddling drills and how to get back in when (not if) we fell in. It was quite a good giggle as several other crews demonstrated such things, including flipping the boat, so we just watched and didnt have to get wet! After the first couple of grade 2 and 3 (out of 5) rapids we did a bit of crew swapping to make the paddling a bit more even. Jason said we were the first crew he had ever had that he had to tell them to paddle LESS hard! Ben, the guide for another crew, took the mick as we had 6 girls and 1 guy, but Jason yelled back, "they dont paddle like girls, they paddle like farmers!". We also took the mick out of Yoshiro, a Japanese guide, by asking if his crew were useless? he clearly didnt understand so just put his thumbs up and said, "yeah, yeah!".

Before the first grade 5 we all got out of the boats to have a look at it from the rocks at the side and plan our descent. The river flow was fairly low at 70-80 cu m per second, or 70-80 elephants as Rana put it, but this made the drop-offs bigger and there were a lot more rocks sticking out. Being good paddlers we got down there pretty easily. Jason went through all the different parts, which have names, but they dont mean much when you are actually in there. We were just listening for his shouts of paddle forward/back/hard, over left/right (where you all jump to that side to stop the boat flipping over), brace and get down. Mostly i tried to breathe when i wasnt being swamped by a wave (i was in the front) and ended up paddling in mid air as the boat tended to rise at the front. We decided that Jason had a thing for rocks as we hit several. The first one both me and Jen, who was also in the front, yelled about to Jason, just in case he hadnt seen it, but we hit it anyway, with the front of the boat and both of us riding up it above the rest of the crew, before sliding back down. We laughed about it afterwards but it definately felt rather like a "Titanic moment" as Jen put it! They had a photographer who boat-hopped down the river, climbing out at various places to take shots. They came out so well (see facebook photo album) and you dont realise how swamped by waves you are til you see a photo where you can just about see Jason and the rest us are under water! The second grade 5 was much longer and took more planning and work, and a few more practice drills before we attempted it. We paddled like absolute monkeys, had to throw ourselves into the bottom several times, but it was awesome.

We did a lot of crew paddle slapping and celebrated our success by throwing Jason out of the boat! It took quite a lot of work as he managed to wedge his feet very well into the boat, so in the end i threw myself into the water with one arm linked around his, dragging him in with me. i thought this was an ace idea until he landed on top of me! oh well, no harm done, nobody drowned, just! As a bit of a break from the crazy rafting, endless paddling and being yelled at by Jason (the louder and more frantic, the more trouble we were about to be in, so when things were good Jen and i could barely hear him, but when we were about to hit something nasty half the district could hear him) we all got out of the boats for a bit of cliff jumping. There were 2 heights 4 metres and 10 metres and you had to do the first one to be allowed to do the second. We had to go in boat and crew order so that people could get back in and head back down the river in some form of organised manner, so we went first. We were told that we MUST jump dead straight with our arms tucked in - the consequences of not doing so inc compressed spines, dislocated shoulders, whiplash and the world's worst bellyflop, so we were definately listening. My crew plunged in style, tho several of us did the "ok i am terrified so i am just going to jump...pants i'm mid air and am not straight with my arms tucked it...splash!" version, though no-one got hurt. A bunch of Japanese girls, truly terrified but determined, kept squatting down at the last minute and not jumping. When the first one finally leapt she threw her arms out and smacked one hand on the rock as she went - oowwww!!! The second jump, being twice and a bit as high, was lots more scary, so the "do it and dont think about it" approach prevailed. The first time i hit the water i expected to pop in and out like a cork, with the buoyancy aid on, but in fact i ended up doing a kind of very slow tumble before surfacing. This time it took longer to hit the water and i went pretty deep before surfacing. having worked out which way was up and which way the river was flowing i then had to swim across the current back to our boat, which was acting as a support for the post-jump shellshocked. So i ended up doing one of those cartoon style moves where you move your arms and legs at high speed but dont actually go anywhere! the rest of the crew were cheering support and i swam harder and harder but really didnt seem to be making any progress! Finally i got close enough for Jason to haul me in with his paddle and the rest of the crew dragged me into the boat by my buoyancy aid and dumped me in the bottom! it was awesome though, if very scary (and the photo proves the latter!). We 'rescued' a few other people who couldnt quite make it across the current, one being one of the Japanese girls. As we waited for the next to jump, Jen asked her what "jump" was in Japanese, so she could shout some encouragement. Having been told she started yelling at the top of the lungs, until the Japanese girl said, "but that girl is Taiwanese!" Man did we laugh at Jen looked so embarassed.

Back to being sensible, paddles at the ready, we negotiated a good few more grade 2, 3 and 4 rapids, including once called Helicopter where i nearly fell out the boat (lost my footing, slid all over the place but somehow managed to find my way back thanks to some fortunate tipping of the boat) before the next grade 5. This one was much longer and needed more work, so we all got out again and planned our strategy. We were 3rd boat down and the two in front didnt make such a good job of it so we were fairly nervous but it came off ok in the end. The last obstacle is called Arlene's, where there is a huge suck back, making the boat surf if you get it wrong. this sounds pretty cool but it usually also involves the entire crew popping out of the boat and being flung into the water, as happened to jason's last crew of older Americans, who when told to get over left, just sat there! Anyhew, with lots of yelling from Jason we cruised on through, plunged a good few metres off the swell and came out the other side oxygen deprived but smiling. Here we picked up Ben, another one of the guides who was boat-hopping between the less experienced guides (not inc jason). It was really hot by then so when he asked to "see my foot for a sec" i knew what he was up to but let him throw me backwards into the water anyway. It was quite a good opportunity to take a pic of the crew from the water! having being laughed at at the beginning for asking if we had to get back into the boat in the right place, i made a point of swimming around the boat abck to the front before getting abck in, but sadly we couldnt get enough weight behind us to knock Ben in for revenge! In the end we all went for a swim before getting to the bottom of the river and hauling the boat out. The guys carried it on their heads to the trailer (i was too short!) and that was the end of our river adventures. It would have been nice to have more larger rapids but it was a great introduction and i really want to go again, and it was awesome fun.

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