Canoe voyage

Press, 4 December 1979, Page 9 (Supplement)

Canoe voyage

Obscured by Waves. Paul Caffyn. John Mclndoe, Dunedin. $11.95. Not for a confirmed West Coaster the "big smoke" of Christchurch. A few days of “exhaust smells, traffic lights and harassed people” tends to drive Paul Caffyn round the bend. So Paul Caffyn, an experienced mountaineer, geologist, photographer and outdoorsman, decided to get away from it all as far as he could: he circumnavigated the South Island in a canoe.

Obscured by Waves is his account of a unique and remarkable journey of some 2500 km through some of the roughest waters in the world, an expedition that took almost three months to complete. Paul Caffyn started his epic “get away from it all” trip from Te Waewae Bay in Southland and travelled up the West Coast and down the East Coast, back to his point of departure. Caffyn’s open style, coupled with an earthy humour and a skilled eye for detail, captures the different aspects of the voyage. Encounters with

sharks and killer whales, vicious tidal races, fishermen, lighthouse keepers, spent at sea, are told with understated frankness and modesty. Well-documented with some beautiful photographs, many of them in colour, detailed maps and

fine pen and ink drawings, and, perhaps above all, the long and gruelling hours Obscured by Waves is a bright and easily-read account of one man and his canoe, on a voyage daunting to all but the hardiest and most resourceful.