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On day 4 we've decided we'd go for a Kayak down the Marlborough Sounds. This is the beginning, uneventful bit of the journey.

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Self portrait on the Sounds.

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Dave, Mike, Fenny and I all pause to examine the New Zealand bush from our sea kayaks. I took out my camera so I could record the historic event.

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These two pictures warrant a little explanation. It might appear to you that I've stood up in the kayak to take these pictures. Or that I held the camera above my head. Yes, I held it above my head. But the Nikon CP990 has a cool swivelling body so that I can still frame the picture and get the exposure right. Cool.

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There's me again, on the Sounds.

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The One True Prophet and his disciples. Miserable because of the sandflies. What does the One True Prophet say about sandflies?

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Here we stopped for lunch and water and toilet break about halfway through our kayaking experience. We didn't actually know this was halfway through. We thought we were only about 40% done. But we found out a bit later that we were quite halfway done. I took some pictures of the little bay so you can think about it.

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Here Fenny practices her mind-over-matter silly Jedi tricks with what we call 'the bill' -- just the front bit of a cap to keep the sun out of her eyes. Dave shows that he doesn't understand the Jedi way, but Mike is not phased at all. He's practiced these tricks and more in his preperation for the Coming of the Great Prawn.

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Fenny the Supermodel! Fenny is funny and loveable and cute and funny and cute and loveable and everything.

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This should give you a feel for the kayak trip. A lot of consulting the map. Quite frankly I'm glad I wasn't in charge of getting lost, or we'd've done it quite properly. These two guys kept us just this side of lost the whole trip, so we actually made it back intact. This was the beginning of a conference...

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That way...

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No, that way...

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Do you know what the fuck you're talking about?

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Right, right. Okay. We'll go here.

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Now this is the last picture of the kayak trip and, in fact, this day that I took. But I'll tell you what happened after this picture was taken. First, we decided to cross to the other side of the Sounds to see a nice picturesque bay and take pictures. But as we paddled out into open waters, a gale force wind hit us from the left and moved us about 300 metres right in two seconds. We promptly paddled to shelter to regroup. "Okay, so we're not gonna cross and, in fact, since we need to be heading upwind, we're gonna try to head back NOW before it gets worse." Well. It got worse. It got wavy and windy and nasty and everything. I yelled at Fenny, Fenny yelled at me. Dave split us apart to keep us from killing each other. Then Mike and I in one kayak and Dave and Fenny in the other kayak paddled upwind from shelter to shelter until we got home. I got so tired I literally could not paddle a couple of times, and my damn leg is STILL numb 7 days later from sitting in that horrible little kayak. I got no pictures of this ordeal. Believe you me, the camera was the last thing I thought of. Once we got ashore, Fenny and I showered and I promptly laid down in the bed and slept. I got up long enough to eat some dinner then go back to bed. I hope you don't get the wrong impression. It was a blast!