Runanga Trip
19th February 2011 as told by Wendy Samuelso

We arrived at our accommodation at about 8.00 on Friday night. Jeff was already there with son Adam, before long Andy and Louise, Bernard and his daughter and Jarred [ minus Suzuki ] arrived, as usual we had a natter for a couple of hours and then off to to bed.

The next morning we woke up to fog but it was nice cool weather. Tony and DJ arrived early then the Manakau guys slowly arrived and after a bit of talking we headed off, unfortunatly Bernard only got a few km's down the road before he had overheating problems and turned back to the motel.

The area we played in was very steep and very washed out but we managed to spend the day playing without to many problems except one of the Manakau guys managed to lay his Safari on its side in a hole and we all helped get it out. Spades and winches were very useful and the Safari came out with out to much trouble.

Some of the tracks were a bit hard to see as they hadn't been used for a long time and were very overgrown, at times we would lose sight of the vehicle in front of us for a couple of minutes and just hope we were on the right track, it was really good when we saw the vehicle in front again. We came down to a big washout. Then we had to drive a few hundred metres on the main road not a nice feeling in a bush truck. When we got back up to the tow vehicles we had a short spell then we went in another direction without to many hassles.

Ivan had a good go at a steep washed out hill in his Landrover but didn't quite make it, then we headed back to our motel for hangi our hosts had put on for our dinner. We talked heaps more before, during and after our dinner as usual.

Sunday morning we were of again down to the Rangitaiki pub and unloaded our bush trucks a few hundred metres down the main road this was a plateau so was lots flatter than Saturdays area. Tony and Denis managed to get through a track, after Tony towed Denis out of a hole, that everyone else by passed and we meet up with them further along.

While we were waiting everyone was surprised to see a yellow blob speeding through the scrub it turned out to be a mountain biker with a yellow helmet, who was riding through the tracks as well, there were also motorbikes in there, so the area was well used.

Further along we found a play area with a mud hole which Henry couldn't resist, it was a little deep but he found he could do donuts at the of it , there wasn't much white left showing on the Suzuki. We moved on along until we came to a small river crossing but Andy had to winch out a log so we could get up the other side, there must have been a lot of rain though the area fairly recently as there was a lot of trees and rubbish that had been washed along the rivers.

We carried on over tracks that had obviously been affected by the rain as well with lots of washed out areas. We stopped for lunch on the edge of a ravine that we decided we could get down but would not be able to get out easily.

After lunch we headed back the way we had come negotiating the difficult bits in the other direction back to our tow vehicles and after having a chat we all headed off for home. Denis had bit of a freaky problem on the way home with two flat tyres on his Safari a little expensive.

Thanks heaps to Jeff for organising the trip.