Justine’s Blog

Paul Caffyn phoned Barry and I up here shortly after we arrived back in Riverton and kindly pointed out that we’d actually gone over 50km backwards this week! Tomorrow we start to nudge back in the right direction. The Andersons have been fantastic and they are kindly driving us to where the road ends tomorrow and then we’re going to walk about 20km back to Port Craig along a marked trail. We could have paid for a helicopter ride and taken about 6 minutes to get there, but the weather is looking windy for a while yet and the walk is meant to be beautiful. It will also be a good test for how well I’m recovered. I’d rather test myself out on a fairly flat walk where I can stop at any time, than run out of energy on a committing 50km paddle in 4 metre plus swells! I’m actually feeling so much better today, with 100 times more energy so hopefully I’m pretty much recovered. I still took it fairly easy today, enjoying chatting to Tim & Sarah in their lovely garden in the sunshine and generally relaxing. Barry and I cycled into town for some groceries and cooked a meal tonight ( a small return for all the delicious meals we’ve been given here). Thanks again to the Andersons for loaning us the delightful ( but safe!) helmets!

Barry also has been great looking after me. I’m trying to milk it for one more day but I think he’s on to me!

The weather isn’t looking too good for a while but at least when we’re at Port Craig we can be ready to make the most of any small break in it to inch forwards. Ahead of us lies about 300km of roadless wilderness that is Fjordland. It’s probably the most beautiful stretch of coastline that we’ll paddle and also the most committing as the nasty weather from the SW hits it first. I think we’re just about ready to have a crack at it!!

I’m feeling much better today, although I’m still low on energy. A 10min walk to an ice-cream shop was as much as I exerted myself and it was enough! Co-incidentally the weather has been mostly terrible while I’ve been sick and we wouldn’t have made much progress anyway, but tomorrow the winds are dying down ( although the swell will still be about 5 metres from the SW!), Wed and Thursday could be light winds with reducing swell so it’s a very good opportunity. However, it’s already Monday night and I’m not sure if I’m up to getting back to Port Craig tomorrow and paddling the next day. I’m off to bed now and we’ll decide in the morning. Thank you so much to Tim, Jacqui, Sarah and Ruby for looking after us so well. We also had Peter, Belinda and Dana for dinner tonight which was great. more fantastic food! Thanks everyone for all the comments on the blog.

I’ve uploaded our GPS routes from Sanoodi.com onto day 8 – day 14 if you want to see where we paddled. you can click on the image, switch from a map to a sat photo, zoom in etc. For some reason which I’m not sure yet the times were were on the water are recorded as too long on most days so our average speed etc is wrong a lot of the time. I’m not sure yet why that is. If we don’t leave tomorrow and I get time then I’ll upload the maps for the other days tomorrow.

JUSTINE IN HER HOSPITAL ‘GLAMOUR GOWN’ AS THE NURSE CALLED IT.
We’re both fine ( don’t worry mum!), but yesterday Justine was helicoptered out of Port Craig to Invercargil hopsital, with Barry coming for support. This is Justine writing and I’ve been feeling really low on energy, with a very sore back and getting fevery. I’ve been struggling to eat and often feeling sick. On our 2nd night in the old school house at Port Craig I woke up at 3am freezing and I just couldn’t get warm, even with layers of clothes and Barry’s sleeping bag aswell as my own. I was so cold I was shivering uncontrolably which put my sore back into spasm. A hot chocolate with extra sugar and honey sorted me out but over the next couple of days I’d constantly swing from being really cold to really hot and sweaty. Walking a hundred metres would wipe me out. There was obviously something serious wrong so we phoned Dr Bob Mark, a UK doctor ( and seakayaker) who agreed to be on the end of a phone for us if we had a medical problem in a remote place. After chatting to him about all my symptoms he diagnosed me to start taking antibiotics ( which we had with us courtesy of another doctor seakayaking friend Suzanna Gaynor). I immediately started taking these but 24 hours later I was feeling even worse, my breathing was really heavy and laboured and I was really week. Barry went to fetch Faye, a nurse staying a the nextdoor hut and she recommended that I get taken to hospital as she was worried that my laboured breathing meant there might be something else wrong aswell. so an hour later we were on a helicopter with a nurse and a paramedic and 20 mins later we landed at the helipad outside Invercargil hospital. The hospital staff were great and after various tests and measurements they diagnosed that I ‘just’ had a bad infection, I was on the right anti-biotics and I should start to feel better within 24 to 48 hours. They discharged me about 11pm and Tim Anderson, who we stayed with before in Riverton, kindly picked us up from the hospital and brought us back to his house again to recover in more luxury. It’s the next afternoon now and I’m feeling much better – still a bit weak but I am starting to want to get back on the water and continue our trip. Our kayaks and kit is still at Port Craig which is a 17km hike from the nearest road, so our next adventure will be getting back there! The earliest we might paddle is Tuesday, we’ll see how it goes.

THE LONGEST WOODEN VIADUCT IN THE WORLD, SEEN FROM OUR FIRST HELICOPTER RIDE!

Still holed up in Port Craig! Strong South Westerly winds and Justine feeling weak with sore back and low energy. Slept lots and being trying to eat lots too. May be here one or two more days. Good weather is due on Monday.

[alex on behalf of jc]