Camp Motutapu 2010

Monday, 3rd May, 2010. All packed and waiting for the ferry to arrive. After around 10 minutes the ferry arrived at half moon bay where we were waiting. We all climbed onto the ferry and sat down. The ferry had to drop us of at Rangitoto Island because there were no wharfs nearer to the camp! So of course we had to walk all the way to camp!

We stopped to have lunch/morning tea in a small field beside a small mangrove forest which wasn’t very long because we had alot more walking to do still! When we got there we got to sit down (hooray!) and then we got to grab our bags that had gotten driven to the camp and find a bed in our dorms, I got a bed about 6 beds away from the door.

We got to enjoy 2 activities that day, the first was orienteering which was hard because we didn’t really know our way around the camp! After that we did sailing which I didn’t participate in so I just went round on the IRB with JR and watched the other people in the sailing boats.

On Tuesday we did: raftbuilding, highropes, confidence course, and kyayking. Raft building was fun but the other team cheated by coping our idea and getting lots of help from their parent and the instructor. In the end our raft fell apart and the other groups raft stayed together and me and Connor were sitting on a buoy and it rolled backwards so we tipped of it and fell in to the freezing cold water! At the high ropes lots of people conquered their fears and did the high ropes with ease and Tabetha even started out afraid of heights and ended out liking heights! I particularly liked the height of the high ropes! As another activity that day we did the Confidence Course which was OK and also sort of fun as we had to use alot of team work which frustrated a few people but the best thing was probably when we had to lift Andrew P and Claudia through a hole in a net a meter above the ground! The other activity we did that day was kayaking. I don’t particularly like kayaking because my arms get really sore!!! But I ended up having to do kayaking any way but when we were just starting to play a game of kayak soccer a rash that had appeared 5 minutes before started stinging really badly I had to go with one of the parents on the beach to find one of the medics. When we found the medics he put some cream on the rash and I didn’t end up doing kayaking.

On Wednesday we did another four activities they were: Archery, survivor, the gunwalk and Rock climbing. First I’ll talk about archery, well we all when to the archery area with troll/Craig and the first group of four stepped up to have their turn and I was in that group of four and I had done archery before so I knew what I was doing and when I took my first shot it flew through the air and out of nowhere I had shot a bulls eye!!!(That was probably my highlight of camp)Then onto the gunwalk, an my it was a walk .The gunwalk was simply a walk through cow poo and cows and grass to some old ruins of the guns that used to sit on the hills of Motutapu island and shoot a long distance to any enemy ships. And we needed our torches because we went underground to see where the ammunition was stored and where the communication was held and when we went into an ammunition room we saw a giant white spider that had a glowing white body with glowing points along its legs! One of the other activities we did was rock climbing which really hurt my arms and legs and I got to the top of all three walls that we were allowed on! And lucky last out of all of our activities was survivor! This activity was probably my favourite activity at camp because what the whole idea of survivor was to use team work to help your team through the challenging course. But the best thing about this activity was falling in the mud and the muddy water which came above my waist at some parts!!! And we got to walk back through a swap like creek!

Well that was all our activities but the extra add on were: The night activities, the game of murderer, and the talent show. First I’ll tell you about the game of murderer, what happened is the parents and the teachers got murdered and we had to guess who the two murderers were and in the end it was a parent and Miss Hulet the game of murder was OK because there was so much fuss about a parent pretending to die! I’ll tell you now what the night activities were like. First we did Spotlight and me and Rachel (a friend from primary) hid together and we had the best hiding spots! Next we did the Burma trail and it was quite a bit scary! Also we kept slipping on some of the steep slopes but it was lucky that we were holding a rope and the person in front of us! And lucky last we did the night activities which were OK but the problem was some of them were a bit boring so we purposely got out so we could play on the mattresses in the little rock climbing area. And the talent show. The talent show was OK and some of the acts included parents and lots of the acts included comedy.

After all the excitement at camp we packed our bags had a mad morning tea and headed off for the ferry wharf. We stopped once at the same place as on the way there and had some rolls which weren’t very nice. And some fruit which I chose an orange and it wouldn’t peel properly. When we reached the wharf the ferry was there waiting for us and we all hopped on board and sat down while we headed home. When the ferry docked we grabbed our bags and went to find our parent and go home!!!