#Boning

I woke up to an early start. I was excited and anxious to start my Haka Tour. Luckily, the night before, I had been introduced to some of the people in my group that had been to the Bay of Islands the day before so I knew a few friendly faces in the morning.

Our guide Ollie told us we’d be visiting Mount Eden, the same mountain I climbed before with Milly. I filled out the paper work, scoffed my food down as fast as possible and then we were on the bus.
It was a short trip to the mountain in the drizzle and we quickly made our way to the top and round. Fortunately, we started from the car park so it was a much shorter version of the walk I had done two days prior!

Back on the bus, I chatted with Enya, a fellow ginger and decedent of Satan himself although I didn't know this at the time. She appeared nice, we bonded over our desire of going to Canada and seeing bears and our love for all things toothy as we both want to see sharks and orcas in the wild. I didn't realise at the time that she was wanting a pet to use in her quest to destroy humanity as we know it. Every villain needs a sidekick and she wanted one big enough, strong enough and toothy enough to kill on demand.

We had a short stop at a petrol station so I purchased some mints, 'perhaps I should have bought garlic!' I thought at the counter, but that wards off vampires not demons. Dennis aka Dinnis made, what would soon be known as, his daily joke, “Say if you’re not here!” We all chuckled the appropriate amount to be polite but also not to encourage him too much, one dad joke at a time Dennis! One at a time!

It was a long drive to our hostel in Coromandel and from there was a short drive to do some bone carving. I embarrassed myself pretty quickly by shouting out, “Are we all ready to go boning?” And then realised what I had just said. At first, my face reddened and then I thought, better to show your true colours early! It then led on to many more boning jokes as we filed and polished our cow bones. I felt like a small child as my bone was regularly taken away by Roland the German bone carver for some "light tweaking!" which was a complete overhaul of the crap job I had done.

I looked at Grainne's bone, she was so much better at boning than me! Her bone was never taken away for tweaking! At the end, we had to rub our bones to turn them white. I didn’t want mine to look white and varnished to the dismay of the lady helping me so I left mine looking natural, out of the corner of my eye I'm sure I saw her glaring at me with rage filled eyes, but it's my bone and I don't have to rub it if I don't want to!

I had chosen the fish hook, in Maori it represents Maui who was half

man, half god and he made the greatest catch in history. As I am very godlike, I felt that we were a good match. I’m also a “great catch” so ya know...it fits!

It was fun but kind of reminded me of when I was at high school and spent an entire term of DT with Miss Pratt, (unfortunate name) filing a piece of plastic for hours and hours! Our tiny teenage hands were red raw. The machines were also too loud to make further boning jokes which was a pity!

We returned to the hostel and while some people did their shopping, Sarah and I found The Lord Of The Rings on VCR. Excitedly, we put the videotape in and pressed play. The screen wobbled and suddenly a blurry Frodo emerged onto the TV! The joys of videos, it was halfway through the film so we would have to wait and rewind it. It took half an hour to get the beginning where Gollum is in his cave. Finally! I pressed play on the remote. “It rewinds quicker when it’s turned off!”
Oh jeez! Thanks Carl! Only half another late with the advice!
He chuckled away to himself as we started the 3 thousand hour film.

Somewhere between Frodo having a meltdown and Gollum eating a fish I got bored and started chatting to Ranji and Dinnis. It turns out Ranji is from Zimbabwe and Dennis from Mozambique so we bonded over our stories of African safaris and holidays. Carl joined us as he told us about his adventures around South Africa too.

A few of us were in the living room and decided to play a game of Heads Up. This is a game similar to charades where you have to act out or describe things and the person on has to guess the word. The room was filled with the noise of 8 people shouting random things and the person who was on, their eyes wide in terror as they tried to quickly decipher the random clues! I chose the act it out one because it’s way easier if the word is monkey, people will just act like a monkey, no way was I guessing the names of American sports stars and politicians!

It wasn’t too long after that before we all headed back to our rooms for a peaceful sleep...or not so peaceful sleep in Ranji’s case as she had to share with 4 snoring men! She was less than amused when I saw her at breakfast the next morning!

Map: Our planned route for the week!