It's Thursday night and there was only 1000 words separating me from what was to be the best weekend in New Zealand. By the time I got back from Frisbee it was almost nine and after dinner and shower it was nearly 10. I quickly ran down to the library and did about an hour of research to beef up my paper and returned home. After going through the readings for the assignments while everyone proceeded to go out for the night, I decided I was way to tired for this, after staying up the night before to finish a different paper. I went to bed just before midnight and woke up at 7:30 to write the paper. I finished by 10:00 and handed in down in the uni library where I met colin to get the car for the weekend. We headed out a little after one for Hanmer Springs 7 hours away. A 24-pack of Speights, 4 kiwis and 8 hours later we arrived in Hanmer and picked up the keys to house where we met up with the rest of the team. We played pictionary and then a couple games of hearts and finally went to bed a little before 1am, to wake up for 8:30am games.
After having to wake up Colin and Kelly up multiple times, and worrying about how i was going to survive the rain and wind, having severely under-packed we finally got to the fields and began to warm up. The sun quickly emerged and it seemed, although windy, to be slowly becoming a nice day. This hope faded as it began to rain, lightly at first, then beginning to pour. We lost our first game, and won the next two by a small margin. In good spirits at the slowing of the rain, we casually began the fourth game, not expecting much from our opponents. We went down 3-7 by half. Deciding we needed in a switch in attitude, I announced I had the perfect cheer. "Clear eyes, full hearts... can't lose, Dunedin Forever." Deciding to flip a switch, Tom Bond and the Dirty South (our team) was a new team, rattling off four quick points to equalize. We battled through the rest of the half and emerged victorious 13-11. Cold but in good spirits we headed to the Hot Springs to warm up. The perfect remedy.
After the hot springs we picked up the makings for Beef Rogan Josh, to contribute to the team pot luck we had going. It was a delicious feast of steamed potatoes, carrots and califlower, with pasta and meat sauce, as well as the rogan josh we contributed. We ate them with Mojitos that jon made and began our drinking for the evening. We played various games at the house and when we finally began to run out of alcohol we made our way to the tourney party at the field house where we had been playing. When we got there the keg had just run out and we were really disapointed, but alas another one appeared and the world was right again. We hung out for a while before Colin and Spencer decided that it was time to do discs (5 beers fit into a frisbee, it is consumed at once, quickly). Jake and Matt went head to head first with matt booting off the balcony mid disc, and jake coming up victorious, but not to long after vomiting right next to matt of the side. Jon accomplished an amazing 35 second disc to the amazement of the entire crowd. The night considered to get crazier and eventually Adrian and I headed back to the house, and played of all things Yahtzee, till everyone else came home. They brought some strangers with them and to get them out we yelled "To the Bars!" and everyone started leaving on our cue, but then we didn't leave, we just went to bed. Unfortunately Colin had passed out in our room in his sleeping bag on the ground in front of the door so you couldn't open it without hitting his head. After much persuasion and a couple hard bumps to the head he finally moved enough to get in.
The next morning, a little hungover and with a black eye from someone hitting me with a backhand in one of our games in the previous day, we headed to the fields after a delicious breakfast that jon cooked. We rolled through our first game 13-1, and then won our next game 13-9 against the team we came back against the day before, putting us in the finals of the South Island Championships, to play the team we lost to on the first day. In a fairly evenly matched game that didn't go our way we went down 7-1 at half. The team kind of demoralized, I started the "Smiles and Bounces" cheer, and we had a much more upbeat second half. I had a pretty good game that week after not playing amazingly that weekend. Adrian, Jon and I dominated handling with just silly drops keeping us in the way of scoring. In one intense zone point. Adrian and I worked and worked between the two of us each with two layouts in the point finally scoring after slowly marching it down the field. We had one good run where we fired three off in a row to come back to end the game 13-5. A loss but it was rather hard fought despite what the score showed. Still happy to finish 2nd we ended the tournament in good spirits and one of our girls won MVP of the tournament.
From there the Baby Beluga (our baby blue compact hatchback, kinda like a golf, rental car) and our crew set off for Christchurch to stay the night before a few extra expeditions the next day. After confusingly navigating the Quaked city with its many detours and road closings, we finally stumbed upon a hostel to stay at and made some great Beef Vindaloo and garlic naan, and played hearts till bed. We woke up in the morning and headed out to Castle Hill, which is a huge boulder field, that is like a maze. It's really cool but paled in comparison to the next adventure, Cave Stream, a 2-3 km underground stream in complete darkness that we hiked.
We had heard about Cave Stream from one of our teammates and decided to check it out. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. From melting ice flows and fresh rain, water levels were especially high and extremely cold that day, and upon first examination we decided it was to dangerous and we shouldn't do it. Then we thought how could we turn away, we'll just keep going till we have to turn around. So that's what we did. With a headlamp and a flashlight for five people we began our way up the tight cave passage that was an arms width at most parts and somewhere around waist deep with its highest being below nipple. It was bone-chillingly cold, probably around 45 degrees F, and everytime we saw a ledge we could get out on, we would warm up with exercises. About an hour in and extremely cold, we reached an impass a 3-4 foot waterfall that we couldn't get up at the current water level. We later found out that we were at the very end, but we had to turn back and do the whole thing all over again. On the way upstream (the first way) I lost my shoe on a rock and it floated downstream, I thought it lost forever. On our way back we found it floating in a small eddy and I was ecstatic. We rushed downstream to get our, knowing that at this point things were getting extremely dangerous as we all ran the risk of hypothermia. We finally made it out with numb legs and feet, happy to be alive. It was probably the most dangerous and exciting thing I have ever done.
After warming up we headed out back home to Dunedin, but not after Colin hit a duck that jumped in front of our car. After the initial shock, Jon exclaimed that we turn around and pick it up because he wanted to keep it to make duck stew. We finally rolled into Dunedin a little after 10 exhausted and ready to pass out. It was an amazing weekend I will never forget
