He Tangata: Sea kayak guide Ciara Pickering

NZ Herald·

29 Nov, 2018 08:00 PM5 mins to read

Sea kayak guide Ciara Pickering. Photo / Supplied

Elisabeth Easther talks to sea kayak guide Ciara Pickering.

Because my dad is a sailor, for a long time life was one big holiday. I'm a Kiwi Filipino — I was born in Hong Kong, then we moved to China, and travelled all over before I started high school in Auckland.

Sailing with my family when I was about 12, we stopped in Thailand at a beachfront campsite. Mum had bought me a book called Chilling Tricks for Cool Chicks. One of the tricks involved mushing banana into my hair to make it more luscious, but then I had to figure out how to rinse it out. So I went swimming in the ocean when Mum thought it'd be brilliant to throw sand into my scalp to scrub the dead skin off and get rid of the banana — so not only did I have banana in my hair, there was sand as well. For ages my hair smelt like bananas, so I was lucky not to be attacked by ants — because they're huge in Thailand. And they bite.

My mum runs a sanctuary, or hacienda, in the Philippines. She farms rice and pigs, and we have two horses, lots of dogs, geese, ducks and over the years she's planted heaps of trees. We visited recently and it's this green space in the middle of all this brown.

While there we visited Taal Lake where there's an island inside a dormant volcano within a lake. We took a boat over then rode horses up to the lake. Only the Philippines equivalent of a horse is like the New Zealand equivalent of a donkey. And we're pretty big compared to the average Filipino and there were moments we felt we should get off the horses to make it less stressful for them. I knew I was meant to be enjoying it but I was anxious for the horses.

I have a Diploma in Adventure Tourism from NMIT in Nelson. Last summer season, guiding in Abel Tasman, my boyfriend and I lived on a 20ft yacht for six months. We anchored our boat in Kaiteriteri Bay and our morning commute consisted of stand-up paddle boarding to the beach and, because work was so close, I'd ride my bike and Dan would hold on to a rope and ride his long board while I pedalled.

Dan and I have this spectacular idea to kayak everywhere we go. We've paddled on Lake Tekapo and Lake Benmore, and Tasman Glacier, in the Mackenzie Country, near Mt Cook, was one of our big ambitions. But it's not very convenient. You can't just drive to the lake and launch. We had to carry the kayak 25 minutes along a walkway. I have a bad achilles and about 10 steps up the staircase, realised I couldn't do it, so Dan and I hooked tow-ropes to the kayak and dragged it to the lake.

We were paddling near icebergs, and from the middle we could see the other side of Mt Cook. We bumped into local kayak guides who gave us the "don't die, be safe" talk, because it is dangerous. If you capsize, your chances of survival in that temperature water are very low unless you're pulled out really quickly. But we didn't die and it was super rad.

For a long time I was terrified of drowning, so I'm surprised I'm a sea kayak guide today.

One afternoon last year, we were on our sailboat, out past Frenchman's Bay in Abel Tasman, and were trying to get back to Anchorage as the wind was forecast to pick up. It was pretty rough, we were worried about a leak and kept checking our life jackets were secure. We just wanted to drop the anchor somewhere calm. Our outboard wasn't too reliable, plus we were worried about the centreboard snapping off. But we had to be back for work so we waited for the wind to die down and at about 11pm we sailed back to Kaiteriteri.

Having been well trained, we know the things to watch for so we started the engine, pulled up the anchor and avoided Pit Head, where all the rocks are. But just as we came close to the mouth of Kaiteriteri, the engine died. Eventually we managed to sail in. We were so exhausted when we got in, we hopped on one of the council moorings and just stayed there until morning.

This summer we're doing a season in Milford Sound — once we've guided in Milford, we hope the experience will allow us to guide all over the world. I recently saw an advertisement for guides in Norway — in summer you do sea kayaking and in winter sled tours to the Northern Lights, so that would be next on our wishlist.