Today Anne completed one of her life's dreams - being photographed for Australia's number 1 adventure magazine in a feature on extreme sports...
The day begun with an early start in Wanaka where we met our guide for our trip canyoning for the day. As complete novices to canyoning with zero abseiling experience we thought it best to opt for their hardcore experience - 'BIG NIGE' which included a 20m descent down a waterfall. You could see our guide Annette (a tomboy in the truest sense) was a little hesistant of our choice when she spotted Anne's carefully manicured nails.
After signing our lives away on a waiver we had a 40 minute drive into the middle of nowhere with the rest of the group - a Mick Hucknall lookilike and a photographer journalist writing an article on the trip for an adventure magazine back in Oz (I hated him straight away!).
Once kitted up into wetsuits (which took some effort) and harnesses and started our 30 minute tramp up to the top of the canyon. After a 5 minute crash course in abseiling we descended into the canyon.
The next four hours were spent abseiling down waterfalls, one of which I nearly ended up faceplanting as I repelled down and passed straight through into an overhang which took me rather by surprise. The rest of the day was spent being thrown side to side by the flow of water as we were washed down waterfalls and jumped slid down rock faces (some of which seemed to be formed perfectly for our personal enjoyment). One of the natural slides was called the bruiser and yes we it did live up to it's name. An excellent day's fun, though i'm not sure Anne was wholly convinced about final leap of faith where we were told when jumping in to watch out for the shallow rocks lying hidden below the water.
After drying off our battered and bruised bodies, that night we parked up in a spot overlooking lake Wanaka, Anney confirmed to me one of the reasons I married - her top notch culinary skills. That night my darling wife attempted to cook for me cheese on toast with a side bowl of Heinz spagetti; sadly she only remembered to toast the bread on one side, the bowl of re-heated spagetti was however delightful.