One of these was Grant and Sarah Smith from the Rotary Club of Albany in District 9910 (they had just returned also from the Future Leaders Seminar in Brisbane and the Rotary Institute so well done on both counts). Here is their email:
What an awesome adventure. Three days to get from Queenstown to Auckland in fancy dress with just 10 dollars.
Personally for us it was a real challenge which took us way outside our comfort zone. Hitching for a ride can be very demoralising as you watch the other competitors go by and wave, and you stand there for more than 30 minutes waiting for a ride. And then it starts to rain! And you are totally reliant on other people for their generosity and support.
We got on Breakfast TV on TV1 on Friday morning, and raised another $1000 with a sausage sizzle in Wellington CBD in just 1 hour.
Lots of physical and mental challenges were also included, as we had a number of challenges to complete on the way. There were gum boot wearing races in Taihape with eggs in your gum boots, Luging challenge in Queenstown having to carry water in a glass as you go up in the chair lift and down on the luge without spilling any water. We had to defrost a frozen T shirt in Hunterville and then wear it, and then carry out communication challenges while blindfolded.
Thank you so much for your support, which will make a real difference to the children of New Zealand. Pictures of the event attached, and there is more info and pictures at www.curekids.org.nz. We personally raised more than $17,000, (second largest amount overall) and the whole $10 Challenge event raised more than $153,000 for Cure Kids. For Sarah and I this was an amazing achievement, and to meet so many incredible people along the journey was very rewarding. Highlight for us was getting a ride in a big rig Volvo truck of NZ Couriers out of Taihape. We met Dave and told him all about Cure Kids, and he then went on to pick up 2 more teams on the way to Taupo, and has now raised a whole lot of money for the charity and wants to do the event next year.
The final challenge was to play as a Samba band together as we crossed the finish line which was awesome. Bit rough to start but by then we were sounding good. There were taste and smell challenges in a winery just outside Queenstown, a 10km run through a mountain bike park in Rotorua, and then finally we had to move 1 cubic meter of mulch by hand in onion sacks in Bombay to get our final points.
