Wanganui River Trip!

Whanganui River trip

Ill start by saying that the river trip was amazing, from the simpleness of being on the river and being surrounded by one of the most peacefull and well persevered nature areas in the world and the relaxed nature of river life, to the incredible amount of the amazing maori culture we experienced. I truly loved every minute of it and I can honestly say that the trip has opened my mind and has made a profound difference on my outlook on life. For this reason this trip will be divided among a couple of posts so that I will be able to explore each aspect to its fullest(despite the fact that all aspects of the trip are all inexplicably linked).

            Ill start with the nature and logistics part of things. Now I warn you that I don’t remember the names of the places we traveled and will thus be lacking in specifics. That being said, the names probably wont mean that much to most of my readership anyway, so it will probably be alright. As a whole we spent 3 days paddling on the river, but due to a rest day and a day of travel at the beginning and an extra night on the river at the end, it was a 5 day trip.

            Our first night was spent in a cow pasture near the river, and it was really good to start getting to know the guides and such. Most of us slept in tents, and for me it was the first of 4 nights I would spend in a tent on the trip. We awoke early the next day for a long day on the river. It wasn’t the warmest or sunniest of days, but to me it did not take away from the beauty of the place. Due to the soft soil of New Zealand, the river has cut a deep, wooded gorge through the hilly countryside. The gorge shields you from the outside world and seems to lock in the beauty around you. Everything was simply stunning. There seemed to be tiny waterfalls everywhere feeding into the river. These create the impression of the river being the center of everything, with everything insight either feeding into, or feeding off of the river. This impression only adds to the isolation and peacefulness felt on the river. Another feeling this creates is being at the center of everything, thus connecting you to all of the wildlife that was to be seen around you. Simply incredible.

            In the end we spent about 7 hours on the river before stopping at our first marae and experiencing our second powhiri, but ill talk about those great cultural experiences later. Anyway before dinner I was able to get in my second swim of the day. My first was that day at lunch when I was able to jump off a rock and float down to where are boats were tied up during our lunch stop(I was surprisingly the only one to do it, though I suppose people thought it was too cold?). But this second swim was really cool. Due to the tightness of the gorge at the spot, there was a very strong eddy. This combined with the normal current created a really neat whirlpool effect. Once I found the right spot, I was able to float down stream, before being caught in the eddy and floating back up the stream. Extremely cool.

            The next day was another early morning, unfortunately the weather took a turn for the worse. In addition to the cool temperature, we had a bit of rain too. This affected some more than others as some got their bottom layers wet causing their core temperature to drop a bit making them extremely miserable. As for myself I found the whole experience quite amazing. Some of you may know that I naturally have a very high body temperature, as such I found the rain on the river an incredible experience. I was even one of those crazy ones you see not wearing any rain jacket and letting themselves get completely soaked. To me there was just something about being on the river in this incredible canyon type setting and watching the rain fall from above that was incredibly peaceful. The feeling this gave me is just so hard to express, especially to those of you who aren’t exactly the most nature oriented(Im looking at you Knudsons : )), but just know that it really was magical.

            We ended up having a long lunch stop that included a descent little hike to the bridge to nowhere (somewhere as our maori guides would say, it was just up to you to figure out where). The hike seemed to warm and cheer everyone, which was really good. Even better was when the sun finally poked its head out about a half hour into our short 2 hour afternoon paddle. By the time we reached our second actual marae, good spirits had returned to our group.  And for the next day and a half we were able to relax, hang out and just enjoy the great company we were all in.

            Our final day of paddling was kind of an eventful one. They keep the last day fairly short for a reason: rapids. Now we had experienced some rapids along the whole of the trip, but the ones to be had on this last section of our river trip were by far the best. Our guides had us paddling hard in order to pull through them, and remain afloat. It is very common for people to either tip, or get swamped during this section. In fact, one of our wakas(canoes) turned into a submarine during one point. Since my waka was the first to go through, we had turned around to watch the rest of the group. We watched as one waka got lower and lower in the water, before finally going completely under! It was a bit of a scary moment for us, but our guide quickly turned our boat upriver, and gave us the command to paddle. And paddle we did, strait up the fast flowing current towards the submerged boat. Fortunately by the time we got there, everyone had made it to shore, along with most of the gear, so all we had to do was help flip the waka back over, but still very exciting.

            In all, the trip went very smoothly and was probably the most scenic experience of my life. I wish all of you out there could experience this trip because I genuinely think you all would have a great time. Woah long post. Anyway, thanks for reading. Next post will probably be a short one about life on the river.