Pureora Easter Camp
It was a long drive all the way from Auckland, three hours approximately, but it was totally worth it!
When we finally got there, we were the second family at the lodge. The rooms were super cosy, there were no ladders on the top bunk so me and my cousin Felix (who came too) were immediately on the top bunks which didn’t bother me at all. The theme of the camp was small nocturnal creatures called pekapeka, which is the NZ native bat. There are two types of pekapeka, one of them is the short tail bat and the other one is called the long tailed bat.
After a good night sleep we woke up, and at about ten o’ clock we all met in the main room and we started the Amazing Race! We split up into a few groups and had to do a whole lot of activities. I was with my mum, dad and Felix, we were called “The Wekas!”. The first activity was where we had to go and make our team name out of found things, aka rocks, branches, flowers etc. Another activity was where you had to build a pekapeka house out of sticks and stuff. But the thing is that pekapeka prefer dark huts so it had to be a pretty good one! Ours was amazing because we found a huge tree stump which had been hollowed out so me and Felix put a whole lot of dead ferns on the tree stump. One of my favorite activities was where we had to make a bat out of stuff like fabric, toilet rolls and so on. The Amazing Race is one of the many highlights of the camp.
The next day we met in the main room again at around nine in the morning for an announcement that we were going to walk up Mount Pureora. It was one and a half hours going up and one going down. On the way up Sarah found the so called “strawberry ice cream plant”, all the kids were pleading for a taste and when she handed it out the kids stuffed it in their mouths. After twenty seconds or so some of the kids (and me) spluttered it out and then Sarah chuckled “oh sorry it’s actually the NZ peppercorn plant”. It felt like a fire was burning in my mouth. It definitely didn’t taste like strawberry ice cream! At the top we had lunch, then after a little break the crew went bug hunting. It was really fun! Me and Felix found a hairy dead spider, but the coolest bug we found was the golden hunting wasp which was really shiny, and no one had found before!
When it was night time and we played a really fun game called moths and pekapeka. The moths had to say… moth. Moth. Moth. Well the pekapeka had to make clicking sounds because we all had our eyes closed, then the pekapeka had to tag the moths and then they were dead! And the moths tried to get to home base (which was the lodge). We played that game while we waited for the fire to burn for toasting marshmallows! It was getting really dark, by then I had lost count of how many marshmallows I had! I didn’t have the best sleep that night but it was fine.
It was really sad when we had to leave and say goodbye to everyone. Me and Felix watched slowly as the cars drove away down the hill. We were one of the last families to leave. It was an even longer drive home, six hours! (including stops). When we finally got home I couldn’t stop thinking about all that had happened in the last few days!
By Tobin. (10 years old)
