Recounts

=RECOUNT = =BY TAINE CARROLL = Monday 8 march

I arrived at school at the early time of 8:30 am, I hopped out of my car onto the hard surface of the concrete netball court. I then ran over to my friends to talk, they like me were all exited about going on camp. Me and Jordan.W soon ran over to class to gather some pens and pencils for our camp booklets, that we had to complete before the end of camp. I was wearing a green t-shirt and some striped shorts, Jordan was wearing black rugby shorts and a red and black t-shirt. Mr Irion quickly called a meeting in room 5 for the parents and the students so we new where we where going and information like that, when the meeting finished me and my friends rushed back to the van. Jordan.W and Nathanael and I hopped into the back seat and started to sing songs.

Around 5 minutes into the journey Nathanael, Jordan, and I were all fully bored. We soon made it to the Hill Top cafe, I was so glad, I hadn’t moved my legs in ages!

I wondered into the cafe to see what it was like. The walls were all wood and so was the floor, I sat down with some friends who were not in the same car as me and started to chat. “Hey Taine” shouted Bakhtiyar, “ come over hear with me and Colby” he said. I followed him to the back of the cafe which was out doors, and he lead me to a fence with barbed wire. Beyond the fence was a few paddocks but in the closest one there were two small billy goats. They were white and they had really cool horns that were very sharp as well, I picked up some grass and lured the smallest of the two goats over to the fence. There wool was very soft and felt like a sheepskin rug, the goat ate the grass out of my hand and before I could pick up another hand full of grass, Mr Irion called us all back to the cars to continue the journey. Soon enough we arrived at the canyon, this was were we were about to start the horrible walk!!!! The canyon wasn’t that big it was just pretty much a parking space with big walls of dirt and rock. I once again hopped out of the van and put on some sun screen, I was feeling quite nervous because the people before us had told us that the walk was terrible.

It was the first hour and a half was all up hill, but when we stopped one of our instructors told us we could go the easy way or the hard way. Half the class chose to go the easy way and the rest, including me foolishly chose the hard way. it was like 80 degrees up hill and at one point I had to literally climb up the track! I finally got to the top, I was exhausted. We than walked a little bit down hill to get to the tree where we stopped for lunch...

When we finally got to camp I was so happy it was really great to have finished the walk, the camp site was really not what I expected it to be, there were trees everywhere! Susie one of our instructors then got us in a group and she talked about how this was paradise and that we could not litter and food scraps had to go in the small bin on the deck. I was so exited I didn’t really listen to everything she said but what I did hear was all the rules so that was lucky.

After she let us go I quickly ran down the wooden stares into the middle hill where our tents had to be put up. Justin ran after me closely followed by Ash.W, we grabbed a tent and started to build. We soon finished but found out it was a dodgy tent. It was to late, we had to go to the high ropes course, so we made a mental note to get a new tent and set it up after tea.

“Wow this is massive” said Justin, “I know ere” I replied. We had just walked over to the high ropes course, the ropes stretched like 20 meters off the ground! Our instructor amy walked us to the equipment shed which was just up a hill, the shed was massive it had all different equipment from tents, to cricket gear, to life jackets, to harnesses! It had the lot, Amy got us kitted up with a helmet and harness and than lead us back down to the course.

The course was big and surrounded by trees, it had four tall wooden poles and two of them had ladders attached to them. There were different courses, one was called ‘giants ladder’ which was 11 big wooden poles with a really big gap between them. There was another one with lots of Buoys that were hanging down from a steel rope and another with ropes that you had to kind of swing across to get to the other ropes. Amy taught us how to belay and how to safely put on a helmet and harness.... Soon enough I was up in the ropes it was really fun and I enjoyed every single bit of it. I ended up climbing every course and I even did 10 push ups on one of the high poles. Justin and I ran up the road back to camp so we wouldn’t be late to cook tea. After tea I went to help Justin and Ash finish building the new tent and than went into the river to help Colby and Bakhtiyar build there spa pool, it was really fun even though the water was FREEZING!!! Later I went off to Nathanael and the Jordan's tent to eat food and lollies. It started to get really packed as most people packed into there tent so we ran outside, and then suddenly we bumped into these other campers, they said that they were from Redcliffes school, it was funny because they thought they were all gangster and one of them called Bakhtiyar a swear word so he wasn’t very happy about that.

Later we played spot light, by this time it was really dark so I couldn’t see much but it turned out to be a very fun game, I was hiding in the bush with Nathanael and I reached out and accidentally touched a prickle bush which stung like a bee sting! We soon got back to the tents and went to sleep.

DAY 2

The next day I woke up because some people were shouting GOOD MORNING, it was so annoying but soon Mr Irion came and told them to be quit which was a relief. Around 20 minutes I had to get up for breakfast, it was great there were tables stacked with food and milo and like 50 pieces of bread! I sat down with my food which was 2 pieces of toast, corn flakes and a cup of milo. When we finished the meal I was really really full, we had to stay seated while Mr Irion talked to us about what we were doing this morning and what time we had to leave for it I think we had like an hour or two before we had to leave.

I was glad because I was tired from yesterday and I had kayaking which wasn’t to hard, so I went off with colby to finish building the pool in the stream.... RING RING RING went the bell for the activity time, I quickly rushed over to the meeting area and sat down on a table. Mr Irion talked to us again abut our activities and safety rules and stuff like that. Soon after that our Instructors came and took my group down to the van and we drove down to the shack again to kit up for kayaking. The van was really dirty and it had wet seats and some ripped carpet on the floor, but still it was better then walking. All I had to were was a life jacket and thats it(which was good because I would hate to go kayaking with a helmet and wet suit ! Amy (our groups instructor) and Kirk taught us how to get into our kayaks, this was boring because I had been kayaking already like 20 times before so I think I new how to get into a kayak! We started off with a game called Shark Tag, were there was one person in and had to tag the rest of the people who were called fish. This game was also very boring, soon we went for a little paddle round a few bays and came to an old shack which used to be the biggest in the whole of NZ, but had closed many years ago. I landed at the bay and jumped into the water which was quite warm I hopped out and got back into my kayak and went out to the others. Next we played a game of kayak water polo my team was the the team with all the yellow life jackets and we were versing all the people with the red life jackets... The final score was 4-3 to us. We soon paddled back to the beach and packed up, and drove on back to camp, drenched and tired.... When I got back to camp I got all dried up and followed my friends to the tables for lunch, we had nice ham subs with ham, lettuce, beetroot, cucumber, and even eggs! I had two a half subs and I wasn’t even full, next I continued on to the river where I helped to finish damning the river so we could get more water in the pools that we made earlier.

Later that day my group went to coasteering, It was awesome we got to jump off rocks, swim in really rough (but safe) water. Also we went kelp surfing and we went crab hunting! Our instructor Tui let us have a little bit of a turn on a slide that she found (it was the path of old lava!). Another thing she showed us was a dinosaur footprint and a massive dirt hill which was by the way a real challenge to climb up! When we got into the van we all decided it would be a good idea to go jumping off the wharf, and that is just what we did. Tahi and I just ran straight off the wharf and jumped as far as we could and dived into the freezing cold water...

Later that night we had our camp concert thing, Jordan.R, Jordan.W, Nathanael, Justin, Ash and I preformed the picnic add. It was crack up, I was acting real weird, my character couldn’t find his mouth and in the end I pretended to shove my picnic into my ear. The rest of the night was pretty gay because all the other acts weren’t rehearsed and they forgot what they were supposed to say, and kept on laughing. That night I got to sleep quite easily but woke up about four times, on the last time I woke up I decided I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep so I just lay down and thought about camp.

DAY 3

Soon enough every body else woke up and started chatting before a teacher came and made us shut up. The bell rang and we all gathered at the tables eager for breakfast. Again I had about four servings and wasn’t even full! Mr Irion again told us about what we had to do today, which was mostly cleaning out the tents, packing bags, a little bit of free time, and ABL sports. Justin, Ash and I started on our tent, we emptied it out and than gave it a sweep, Justin went away somewhere and Ash followed him so I had to do the rest of the cleaning up around our tent.

When I finished I went into the stream to help with the pools even though we new we wouldn’t be able to swim in them because it was to late. Bakhtiyar and I started making the walls higher before we heard the bell ring again RING RING RING and we all rushed off to the tables once more, we had to wait a while because our ABL instructors were late to turn up so we had a little snack and drink.

Finally they turned up with our class mate Abigail. The two instructors lead us down to the bottom field where they had all there gear scattered around the field. We got split into to teams and each team lined up on one line, the aim of the game was to get the ball and bring it over your line while the other team is doing the same thing. It was quite a challenge. after that game Jordan.W and I went off to play in the river because we were really bored, because the games were all really babyish an weren’t that fun at all. We thought if we got caught bunking the game then we would be in trouble so we both decided to go back to the games. I didn’t really play the game much I just did what everybody else did. soon enough the instructors said we could go and have lunch so we all sprinted up the stairs and sat at our tables. For lunch we had burgers or something, they were real nice and filling. By this stage my mum was there with the van and she was helping to cook the lunch.

Next all the people that were in my car on the way to camp followed me into the van and sat down. We soon left the camp and I fell asleep. I woke up later at school and we dropped the rest of the people off. I really liked camp and I think I would give it ten out of ten!