David turned 49 this year and for his birthday we surprised him with a day of zip lining. Zack made 2 very special fishing lures for his dad's birthday. He carved them himself at Rob's carving class. He was super excited to give them to David and could hardly wait to see how they would work in the water. They were tested before breakfast and worked great, especially the big one which had a really cool drag action across the water. Zack also gave David 3 lures we had bought in Keri-Keri. It was a big fishing birthday! As soon as the weather clears we are going out to the Bay of Islands to test them out.

For a special treat for David's birthday Zack decided we should take him zip lining. We invited Sueno and met at Adventure Forest for a great day. It is Nathalie's birthday on the 20th so it was a great combined celebration. Adventure Forest is run by a couple that had sailed from France and fallen in love with New Zealand. They were really cool and the cruiser/French connection was great.

Adventure forest is 8 different zip line courses. Ranging from kiddie to very challenging. It wasn't just zip lining either, there were lots of challenges in the courses. Francois had a very unique safety system which locked a person into the course. It allowed a child to be hooked into a course by a parent and then they were free to do it on their own. They were attached to the course and the only way to unattach was at the end of the course. Zack and Noemei were too short for the 2 most challenging courses but they had 4 really good courses to choose from that were fast and fun. The courses were made up of zip lines and activities like walking across logs or swinging ropes or small platforms that moved when you stepped on them. There were rope ladders to climb and rope spider webs to crash into, swinging log bridges to cross and zip lines that were so fast you crashed into a padded net and had to grab a line to save yourself from sliding back to the middle of the line and having to drag yourself back down. On the most difficult course it was basically a high off the ground scare course. There was a traverse where you needed to step on lines to get across. The problem was the lines moved down when you stepped on it and when you lifted your back foot to go forward the line went down again, all about 50 feet above the ground. There was a Jane swing where you put one foot into a loop of rope and swung into a rope net, then climbed up to release yourself and get over to the next challenge. There were board swings that swung as you crossed them, they were far enough apart to make it a bit scary to grab them. Also suspended ropes to cross.

We had some lunch and chocolate birthday cake. A great day for everyone!!!