Our first official recon mission has taken us a ways upstream on the Waikato, a wide milky blue river here near the ocean, flowing between sheep paddocks and around braiding sandbars of pulverized mountain carried from the west, where the Waikato rises from melting snows on the high volcanoes of Tongariro. With our boat nudged onto one of the sandbars in mid-river, my friend Steve and I dig out our lunches and collapse onto the sand. We hear a droning over the whitewater; then, from upriver, GQ Man, as we would come to call him, roars into view in a small beaten-up jetboat, bounces over the rapids, carves a stylish turn through the big eddy in front of us and pounds his boat up the gravel a few feet away.

"The name's Glen. Good to meet you," he says with a big smile, clambering out and reaching into his pocket to roll a cigarette. He has stylishly messy blond hair, second-day stubble, and is wearing a smart-looking pair of knee-high boots and tan moleskin pants--Abercrombie & Fitch meets the Marlboro Man. He takes one look at our admittedly pathetic sandwiches (peanut butter) and generously makes an offer of food: "You blokes want some sheep's tails?"