New Zealand; Day 8

To sum up today, I went fly fishing and caught a 4lb brown trout, and Bevan went bungy jumping. Needless to say we're both now exhausted (although Bevan did get his second wind when he discovered the insinkerator in our hotel room, to the extent of encouraging me not to eat all of my pasta so that he had something to destroy).





My guide for the day, Craig, collected me from our hotel at 8.30am for a helicopter trip up the Mohaka River near Lake Taupo in the middle of the North Island. The chopper was a little white bubble model, just like the one on the cover of ABBA's Arrival album. Well just like, except that ABBA weren't wearing waders and I doubt either Frida or Agnetha needed a step ladder to get into the chopper, or made anywhere near as an undignified, uncontrolled exit at the other end.

After a quick refresher on my fly casting technique we started wading up river. All day we were casting into a head wind, and at times the wind made the river surface rippled and harder to see the fish, so Craig set some very low expectations on our chances of even spotting one let alone catching any.

However, about 10 minutes later I managed to hook a nice big brown trout. Sadly I misheard Craig's instructions as "hold the line" when he actually said "I'll hold the line", so me grabbing the reel just as the fish pulled meant that it skipped free of the net and disappeared down river with the fly. At this point I was happy simply to have a fishing story about "the one that got away". (Actually I was just happy that Craig had waders to fit me, so anything else for the day was a bonus.)

About half an hour later I got another nibble, and this time managed to reel it in. Apparently brown trout are quite lazy and rainbow trout are the ones that put up a fight, but as you can see this one really made me work for the trophy photos. It wasn't until after I'd released him back into the water that the adrenalin hit and I could really enjoy the moment. Craig's net has built-in scales, which is how I can accurately say it weighed 4 pounds.

For the rest of the day the wind was right up, and while we saw plenty of fish we didn't even get a nibble. Then it was a high-speed hike cross-country back to the chopper meeting point, another terribly undignified moment fighting the waders and my stumpy little legs to get up into cabin, and a bumpy ride home.

Meanwhile, Bevan and Eleanor had discovered a ride-on train near yesterday's playground, and visited the Craters of Moon which is one of the local thermal mud pools. Eleanor, observant as ever, saw all the mud and announced sadly that she'd left her gumboots at home.

By the time we got back to Taupo and I thanked Craig for one of the best days of my life, it was time for Bevan's bungy jump. Back when we first decided to visit NZ he announced that he wanted to see if he could actually throw himself off the ledge, especially without the sort of peer pressure that had pushed him to do abseiling and other action sports as part of group activities in the past. While the jump in Taupo isn't as high as Queenstown it is the world's highest water-touch bungy. Eleanor and I watched from the vantage point as he stood there for what seemed like ages - and he later confessed that he really did come close to backing away - before he lifted his hands above his head and went over. I was so very, very proud of him, and I suspect he's a bit proud of himself too.