Blazing paddles

We arrived in the cute town of Ohakune on Tuesday afternoon, giving us enough time to figure out the logistics of how, exactly, we were going to canoe 90kms down the Whanganui River from Whakahoro to Pipiriki.  Known as the Whanganui Journey, this is one of the 9 Great Walks of New Zealand; each of them being a multi-day hike (other than this one) for which the Dept of Conservation camping grounds and hut spaces along the route are very limited and have to be booked way in advance.  I'd booked 3 of the Great Walks back in June: 2 on the South Island and this one, on the North Island.  We would be staying in 2 huts along the way, which provide bed, kitchen gas stoves and toilet.  Anything else, you have to bring yourself.  

So, we had our sleeping bags, tin mugs, head torches and toilet paper.  We just didn't have a canoe, or any way of getting to the start and back from the finish. Luckily the Kiwis are very organised when it comes to The Great Outdoors.  On arrival in Ohakune (a sort of mid-point town between the start and finish points) we went straight to the i-site to be told not only where we could buy camping provisions, but also booked us up with Canoe Safaris, who were going to take care of all the rest.  At 3pm we drove around the corner (when I called Ohakune a town, it's of the one-horse variety) and met Phil, who explained how it was going to work:  we were to show up at 7am the next day, with a dry bag each full of whatever clothing we needed (essentially wet weather gear and a change of clothes in case we capsize) and our food/drinks.  We'd stick those into 3 big watertight drums, stick them, along with canoe, lifejackets, paddles etc on a big trailer and drive an hour to the start.  3 days later, he'll pick us up at the other end.  Simples.

The engine room

Next morning we set off.  We have another honeymooning couple from Hampsted with us, Esha and Mani, and a couple of young german lads.  An hour of single file dirt track, hugging the river banks (with a good drop down to the river) took us to the starting point.  Phil gave us a crash course on how to paddle, how to navigate rapids and one piece of advice: don't argue!  (Needless to say, that last tidbit was probably the most useful of the lot.)  There was very little health and safety: we had a beacon if anything went seriously wrong - otherwise the 6 of us were on our own.  We set off, successfully riding the first rapid following Phil's instructions. This was going to be a doddle...  The river sits in a massive ravine, and with the water a low as it was, it made for a dramatic watery highway, with the cliffs towering up either side of us, huge rocks sometimes covered with layers of tropical vegetation, clinging onto the thin soil.  The water level also meant that the water flow was pretty gentle, sometimes barely moving at all, but needing lots of paddling.  Paddling is mainly the job of the person in the bows; they're the engine.  The person in the stern does the steering, which can be tricky in the rapids (and if you get it wrong, that's when you tip over) but also important that you stay in the fastest stream and don't zigzag across from bank to bank.  With 90kms to paddle, we certainly didn't need any extras.

After a couple of hours we stopped briefly at a DOC campsite for lunch, feeling quite chuffed with our progress.  Turns out we hadn't progressed as well as we'd originally thought: 4 hours later we finally hit the John Coull Hut where we would spend the night.  A short clamber up the steep river bank took us to a basic hut with kitchen and one bunk room.  12 mattresses on the bottom, and 12 on the top.  The DOC ranger and his wife greeted us and we all dug into our food barrels for drinks and dinner.  Getting to know our fellow canoers (is that a word?) we had 5 Aussies who were doing the full 5 day journey and had already had 2 nights camping, Esha and Mani, Sue and Rob, who were celebrating Rob's retirement with a 'peak to sea' journey on bikes and canoe and Denys and Keith from Manchester who, in their late 40s had decided that there's got to be more to life than working in IT, and jacked it all in to travel for 2 years.  All Brits!  And all fun.

Bridge to Nowhere

The dorm woke around 5am.  We'd all gone to bed around 8pm, some sleeping better than others - depending on whether you remembered your earplugs or not.  Breakfast, pack everything back into the barrels, load up and off we went.  More of the same - lots of paddling on slow water, livened up by a few exciting rapids.  Having been navigator yesterday, I was in the front today - not nearly as much fun and much more tiring on the arms and back.  We had another 7 hours of paddling again, but broken up by a visit to the Bridge to Nowhere.  We moored up with our 6 fellow Brits and followed a small path into the dense fern forest. Extremely lush and green, this is all growing on the thinnest layer of soil.  So thin, that when the land was parceled up and handed out to soldiers returning from WW1, very few of them could actually make a success of farming it.  They battled the remoteness of living in really mountainous terrain, days from any real civilisation and only accessible by boat and dirt tracks through the forest.  Having cleared the forest for farming, the rains simply washed off the top soil, leaving them with almost nothing to work with.  The permanent bridge was finally built in 1936 to provide proper access across the Mangapurua river's deep ravine, but ironically many of the pioneers had already left and within 2 years the government had decided not to maintain the tracks after being washed away in a particularly heavy storm, and the last farmers were forced to leave, leaving the tracks to be reclaimed by the forest.  

Another long day of paddling over, we landed at Tieke Kainga, a marae: IOW, a campground and hut on Maori land, run by ancestors of the Maori forefathers.  While the hut itself was as simple as the previous night, the property includes a marae whenua, or totem pole, intricately carved with the Maori gods who protect us on the river.  We had an offical Maori welcome, which included all the men standing to introduce themselves and their partners, and the women then supporting with a song.  After a hard day's canoeing, not one of us really wanted to break out into song, so after a quick women's conflab, it was a toss up between jointly singing 'Thank you for the music' or 'Kumbaya'.  I'll leave it to you to guess which won out...all I'll say is it was well received.  

Up the creek

We were all quite relieved to have reached the final day of paddling.  Backs and arms were sore all round and those in the front of the canoes were getting a bit fed up with constantly getting soaked in the rapids.  So after another similar early evening and morning, we all set off together.  The river was getting flatter, so even more paddling required, but we knew that today we had the 2 most difficult rapids to master.  A couple of hours in, we hit the first one.  We had instructions to take the left stream, which looked far worse than the right.  After a bit of shouting discussion between boats on the best route and summing up of courage, Duncan and I took the plunge, swiftly followed by Keith and Denys.  We pulled our canoes in on the right bank, directly after the rapid, to see Sue and Rob take the right stream.  They made it.  But Mani and Esha weren't so fortunate...we saw them head into the stream, but they didn't appear again around the corner.  We waited 10 minutes. No sign.  And there was no way we could get upstream to them.  As we started to get a bit concerned, a jetboat, ferrying tourists up to the Bridge to Nowhere appeared. We flagged it down, explained our concern and up they went to investigate.  Thumbs up that Esha and Mani were OK, but their canoe was severely stuck - jammed between two logs, submerged with the force of the current pushing it deeper.  An hour of Duncan, Rob and jet-boat-guy trying to dislodge came to no fruition so finally they gave up, abandoning it to be retrieved when the river level falls.  Esha, Mani, Rob and Sue all elected to jump on the jetboat for the final stretch, leaving 2 canoes to paddle back.  Having spent so long on the salvage operation, we had to get a move on.  We paddled without a break - taking an extra 10 minutes to explore a hidden ravine which opened out into the most glorious natural amphi-theatre.  We made the pick up by 2pm cut off, exhausted and glad to be finished.  It was a great journey, and lots of fun, but, boy, do we need a good rest.  And a shower.