It was Friday and after rapidly moving house for the third time in three weeks we were off...on a route drawn out by a Parkinson's sufferer (otherwise known as Garmin satnav). It plotted a route that took in possibly every corner New Zealand's highway system has to offer and all crammed neatly into a 6 hour trip. 'Gentle Annie' unfortunately did not live up to her name and left even the strongest stomached belching to relieve the nauseating motion sickness. Stacey, one of our travelling companions, became somewhat hysterical when she realised we had no water on board and she was about to throw up..."I just don't want to wash the sick down with Coke". Needless to say Claire suffered the most and combated this by sleeping for the entire journey, waking up only briefly to quickly rename everyone in the car; Tony became John, Stacey was Ruth, Fiona turned into Rachel and Greg transformed into Trevor.

After a cosy 5 hours sleep in our batch (cottage) at the foot of Mount Ruapehu we rose bright and early to get down to the ski shop, rent our kit and get going. On arriving at the shop the atmosphere seemed somewhat subdued. We appeared to be the only customers...crazy as by 7am we should be queuing up behind at least five Germans. The mountain was closed.

The natural alternative was obvious, horse riding. Ruth had plenty of riding experience but is recovering from a severe knee injury, the rest of us were novices. As we set off on our horse trek in the foot hills of a volcano we soon realised each horse had its own character. At the front was Claire on Cherokee, a grumpy horse who kept attempting to take off into the distance, very shortly followed by John on Dotcom, a somewhat clumsy horse who mostly enjoyed having her nose up Cherokee's bottom. Then there was Trevor on Montana, a disobedient teenager (at least one of the horse/rider personalities matched). Behind that came Rachel on Shadow, a horse determined to trot despite Rachel's protestations. Finally Ruth, on Beauty, effortlessly riding as well as providing some much needed instruction from the back end. It was a very successful trip around the local village, passing Harrods and pausing for a few moments while Dotcom led John off into someone's front garden to unsteadily hover for a wee, finished off nicely with a fart that would have registered on the Richter scale.

The afternoon was spent on a 10km hike to see a very large, very high, viaduct. It was only while walking across said viaduct that everyone remembered their fear of heights. It didn't help that the viaduct walkway was made up largely of railway sleepers with human sized gaps in between. Tony in particular felt it necessary to hold the handrail so tightly that, on reaching the other side, it became apparent that he had removed 90% of the paint from the rail.

Day two, and determined to get some time on the slopes, Claire woke up early to check the status of the slopes, with one sleepy eye open, she was surprised to see that they were open and woke the rest of the group. We were soon on our way once again to the hire shop, which this time was a hive of activity. What ensued was half an hour of four indecisive people checking forecasts, discussing snow conditions, trying on ski/snowboard boots and finally deciding to pack in the idea of skiing as the weather rapidly took a turn for the worse.

We had a better option up our sleeves, the local information centre the previous day had given us the heads up that a nearby dam was being let out, this only happens twice a year. This meant that a section of river with grade 4 rapids became open to raft on. As the rafting guide described the grades of rapids are 1-6, with 1 being rafting in your bathtub and 6 being dying. All of the guides had turned out for this special bi-annual occasion and were oozing excitement. We donned our protective gear, Claire ensured she had extra fleece layers, a hat under her helmet and gloves, and we practiced our rafting moves on dry land before heading off. We set out from the base of a large hydro-electric dam that was in full flow filling a previously dry riverbed. It was one and a half hours of exhilaration with very white water, a lot of which ended up in our raft or face. It was on one particular set of rapids that despite our expert paddling (mostly of air) we ended up heading down sideways, we soon realised this was not an optimal rafting position as we hurtled sideways into a rock. Greg was rapidly ejected from the downstream side of the raft. Claire did a few more air paddles before realising something was wrong, she turned and was greeted with the sight of Greg's only remaining body part in the boat - his feet, which Tony was holding onto for dear life. Unfortunately Greg was face down in the water and the anchoring of his feet was keeping him there. Luckily, we managed to fumble a vague resemblance of our practice session to get a very startled Greg back on board. Unfortunately his paddle was never seen again, it was all ok though as he acquired a brightly coloured stunted spare. He claims he was "always in control".