Coopers Beach - Day 4 (part 1)

Day 4 - Saturday

Another day arrived with hideous punctuality. I stumbled off to the leader's meeting dazed, confused, and barefoot - much like everyone else there. I learnt that there would be two activities that day which struck fear into the depths of my soul - the Leader's Hunt and The Great Big Hairy Beach Race. In previous years these activites had revealed the extent of my general unfitness for all to see and scorn. Despite my having lusciously long legs, they seem to lack the ability to move very fast. Or for very long.

I moaned and took myself off to visit my campers, who complained about my over-the-top bedtime ritual. They actually managed to succeed in making me feel guilty. I decided to try and be nice to them for the rest of the day to make up.

My team mysteriously acquired another male leader that day in the form of Ryan. I discovered this when he sat down at our table during breakfast wearing a leader's shirt and started getting to know some of the campers. I shrugged and accepted it.

After breakfast there was yet another singing/dancing session that I managed to work my way through without mishap. I secretly enjoyed myself tremendously. Izak and I were also in charge of doing the memory verse, so we created an elaborate pictorial version of the verse that people had to try and decipher. Their task was not made easier by a platypus-like owl to represent the word "who" and a mustache to represent "man".

And then began the Leader's Hunt. The purpose of this game was to search up and down the rather extensive beach and look for Head Leaders who had disguised themselves with varying degrees of success, say "I like to move it move it" a la  Madagascar, and claim a piece of a jigsaw puzzle that had to be assembled at the end.

Some of these head leaders were actually pretty creative. Some donned wigs and read books on the beach. One found an isolated carpark and sat inside his car. Two others pretended to be council workers erecting a wall around the public toilets, though the bright blonde Marilyn Monroe-style wig one of them was wearing tended to give them away. There was a strangely pale Arab sitting upon a grassy knoll, a shellfish gatherer, and, most bizarrely of all, a gorilla in a tree. This last caused some locals whose property was adjacent to the beach some consternation. What was a gorilla doing in a tree? These neighbours must have had minds of sharpest steel for they quickly deduced that this was not a real gorilla but, in fact, a man dressed up as a gorilla. This did not alleviate their worry. As they peered surruptitiously out of the large windows of their beachfront mansions they became convinced that the gorilla was some sort of paedophile luring children in with his amusing choice of outfit. Why else would many different groups of children be induced to say "I like to move it move it" in such excitable fashion? I am uncertain as to what exactly transpired thereafter, but I believe the police were called and the gorilla was forced to explain his occupation of Christian Kids' Camp Leader.

My team actually did not do too badly. Whereas last year my energy was devoted to trying to simply stay alive while my team shouted at me to run faster, this year it seemed like I was the Motivator of the group.
"Hurry up, guys!" I cried as I strode quickly onwards. "Stop dawdling! We're lagging behind!"
As my team wearily chased after me I found myself called upon to explain the meanings of "dawdling" and "lagging".

At last we had collected all but the final piece. We'd already walked up and down the beach twice; what had we missed? Luckily another team was in the same boat, and we decided to ally and trade information.
"Did you get the Arab?" asked Other Elliott loudly, trying to speak over the wild cries of a rambunctuous group of children who were playing nearby.
"Yeah, we got the Arab," replied Luke, the leader of the other team. "Did you get the guy who was hiding in the grass?"
"Yes, we found him," I said, but apparently I was invisible or at the very least inaudible that day because Other Elliot did not seem to hear me.
"The guy in the grass? I don't think we got him," said Other Elliott.
"We did get him," I said again.
"Hey, did we find the guy in the grass?" Other Elliott asked the other members of our team.
I sighed and gave up on the whole conversation. I stared around at our surroundings. We were standing on a grassy bank surrounded by pohutukawa trees, knarled and bent like old men. A whanau of Maori sat at a nearby picnic table surrounded by the remnants of their lunch. The matriarch of the family sat and surveyed her domain while a man, presumably her husband, reclined on a towel on the ground next to her. Presumably, the group of loud children belonged to them. As I watched, Fellow Leader Izak turned up with his group and advanced towards the reclining man, giving us surruptitious glances.
"I like to move it move it," whispered his team. The reclining man reached and pulled out from under his towel a piece of a puzzle and handed it to them.
"AH!" I said in surprise, for I suddenly percieved the man to be none other than Head Leader Peter in clever disguise. I spun wildly around to my team, who were still arguing about the man in the grass. They still did not hear me, so I emitted such such an agonizing scream of pain-ridden irritation that I'm surprised the locals did not perk up their ears and wonder who was being murdered in such a gruesome fashion.
"AAAARRRRRRRGGHHH!" I shrieked.
"What?" everyone asked me.
"THERE!" I shouted, and pointed at the reclining man and Izak's team who were now legging it as fast as they could back towards the beach.
I was gratified to hear an answering chorus of "AAARRRGH's". Together, the two teams swarmed over the grass towards the reclining man.
"I LIKE TO MOVE IT MOVE IT!!!" we bellowed, and there was some confusion as Head Leader Peter had to sort out which two teams were accosting him. The other team got their piece first and tore off down the beach to Head Leader Terri who had the final piece. We got ours and ran off after them, and the final agonizing seconds of the race came down to who could assemble their puzzle quicker.

We ended up coming fourth. The other team came third. We still cheered loudly and congratulated ourselves at being so brilliant.