I have just returned from a few days in Blenheim where I was attending the PSNZ National Convention. While there a couple of us decided to find the boat wrecks that we had been told about. “It’s a big place” we were told and we should have paid attention to that comment. We set off in the dark hoping to be there by sunrise to capture the wreck with the colours of the sunrise behind it. Walking with torches to see where we were going we headed down the walking track. We came to a fork in the track and a sign giving the time it would take for each track – one was considerably shorter than the other one. Bearing in mind that my feet don’t cope with a lot of walking and my back was loaded up with 7kg of camera gear and the sky was already starting to lighten, we decided to take the short track. 
I should point out that the friend who was heading out there with me also had strained her back the day before, so we were both feeling less than 100%. Anyway we continued walk, and walk, and walk! I was beginning to think we wouldn’t make it in time as the sky was turning into a glorious array of colours and the boat wreck was no where in sight. Actually it wasn’t far off at all and we managed to get to it in time but not before we had to walk through a lot of really nasty water. The track was flooded in several places. With the sunrise rapidly leaving us and our shots complete, we had to head back in a bit of a hurry to catch the start of our workshop at 8.30am. 
It was at this point that we saw the sign that told us there was 3km to the car park where we had parked our rental car. My mind did a quick calculation and panic started to set in. A 6km walk was well out of my range at the moment and I had no choice but to complete it. For the last few hundred metres, my wonderful friend ended up carrying not only her camera gear and tripod but mine also, and all that with a bad back too. I really don’t know how she did it but by this stage I was seriously unable to manage it on my own. It was hard on us both but I believe the resulting images were well worth the pain it took to achieve them! Enjoy!