A Camping We Will Go.....

We dropped A10 and The Lad off at the bottom of the Kaimai Ranges (at Thompson's Track) and they walked for 2 1/2 hours up, up, up! A10 was well relieved to reach the top and set up camp, bivouac-style:



After a c-o-l-d (according to A10) night, warm spaghetti and meatballs from a tin (A10 being very excited to have tried them for the first time) were on the menu for brekky:


An early-morning walk (complete with a sunrise and an awesome view) saw A10 stoked with his first deer track sighting:







Now this is for A10's sisters - because they always question why nothing is ever brought home from these nature walks with a gun! He reckons it's a lot harder to spot a deer than they think - here he is demonstrating the fine art of camouflage, and spotting a deer is *a lot* harder than spotting a 10yob:


On returning from the walk, A10 managed to avoid stepping on a dead possum (eewwww!) from someone's soujourn the night before, and a little sitting around was on the cards to replenish their energy for the long walk back down:



They met a group of quad-bike riders out for the day and were entertained by their antics along the way. The guy in the blue was 'crazy' according to A10. They were well-rehearsed at rescuing eachother from waist-deep mud, and made it all look easy: