This first full week all together has been amazing! We have bonded and gotten to know each other so well. We started off with a few days of orientation in Auckland. This included our scavenger hunt around the city, a day hike up Davenport island and so much more. On our hike the boys found their chi and all of us got in touch with Mario.
We ended orientation and started our first of many travel days. we took multiple buses and finally arrived at the Blue Mountain Adventure Center (BMAC) where we have been all week.
We started our BMAC adventured with some group bonding team building leadership games. We followed those by doing some very heart racing activities to get the adrenalin pumping for our trip. We abseiled 30m ….. translation … we repelled an almost 100foot rock face. IT WAS AMAZING! It was challenging at first to trust the ropes and harness to hold you but once you made it over the ledge onto the wall it was fantastic. After we descended the wall, we kept on traveling down for our next adventure.
We went caving next switching our harnesses and ropes for headlamps and overall jump suits. Sorry no caving pics but we were squeezing through some tight spots and crawling through water so we left our cameras and bags in the van. Our first night of activities was drawn to a close with a big bowl of home made stir fry.
Day 2 of BMAC we went Mountainiering. We were given waterproof pants, gloves, boots, gators that go around your ankles to keep the snow out, thermal layers, spikey metal shoe atttatchments called crampons (that we sadly didn;t get to use), helmets and most importantly an ice ax pick thing 🙂 When we were all geared up, we drove up into the mountains right into the snow. At first walking through the snow on a slight incline was really really hard but after being taught tricks for stepping in the snow and how to use our ax we fell into stride and started cruising up the mountain. when we stopped for lunch we also ended up having an epic snowball fight and luckily people managed to avoid hitting my camera!
After we had finished lunch we got some lessons in sliding down a snowy hill and self arresting (stopping yourself from sliding with your ax thing). It was so much fun to essentially ride snow rollercoasters but the same time learn some survival skills. Despite the cold it was an amazing day so far… that is until we found out our waterproof pants weren’t actually waterproof.
After sliding down on our bums, our pants could only hold out the water for so long. By the time we got back to the BMAC vans we were all freezing. Thank goodness we had our fire master Tanner ready to warm up the house as soon as we got back. Dinner was a home made chicken soup and it worked in restoring everyone to a reasonable body temperature.
The next day we went white water rafting which our Frodo Bloggins will talk about. We had some chicken and vegetables for dinner and stayed try for the night.
On our last day of planned activities at BMAC, we went mountain biking in the morning and in the afternoon we rock climbed and did a giant swing from the high ropes course. The mountain biking was so much fun… at first it was hard the get the hang of it because it is so different from road biking but by the end i had figured it out. Some people took some nice falls and there are many new bruises on everyone but overall it was a great activity. Jay even went off a wicked jump!
TO conclude our time at BMAC we paired up and painted symbols on each other of goals we made for the trip. It was so much fun. After we finished, Kiana and Micah (the BMAC leader’s kids) decided they wanted to continue painting my face and I stupidly let them. In mere moments I was covered in paint! I managed to escape their grasps in time to shower before our fabulous chili dinner.
Our last day at BMAC was actually a free day. 7 of our group splurged and went skiing and snowboarding while the remaining 5 went hiking with Cheridyn (Ryan took a nap). Frodo Bloggins has gone into more detail about our hike so ill skip over some of it. We became the fellowship of the ring and took and epic travelers picture. That night we invited all the BMAC people and their families over for and ended up feeding 28 people with a baked potato bar.
Sorry for the very very long winded blog — just wanted to fill you all in on our adventures!
-Syd T-K