Kayaking the Rangitikei

So this week we said bye to Graham aka G-Force Vaughan, one of the guides we have hung out lots with this season. He's flown back to Canada for a few days before heading off to his next job, sea kayak guiding in Chile...what a life.
We had a spare afternoon this week so another one of the guides, Raymi, and I chucked a couple of whitewater kayaks in the van and headed off down SH1 towards Taihape to paddle the Rangitikei river on my first proper kayaking mission since learning a few skills in the local lake.
We dropped our shuttle vehicle, Raymi's car, off and stashed the kayaks at the start, before dropping the work van at the finish, which would hopefully be waiting for us at the end of our paddle.
The section we did was around 11KM, and was a mix of flatter sections of water mixed with grade 2 rapids. The rapids and scenery are very different from that on the Whanganui, with high rock cliffs flanking the river, the water being a lot clearer and also filled with more rocks.
We suited up about a kilometre off the main highway and got dressed up with all the usual gear; lifejacket, helmet, sprayskirt and enough safety gear to refloat the Rena (look it up).
The first few rapids were reasonably easy with long-ish wave trains and easy to avoid rocks although we both seemed to have a sore bum after one particular trap. The view from a kayak is pretty different to when sitting off the water in the saftey of a canoe, and we both took a few splashes to the face along the way from the waves. As we progressed down the river the rapids became a little more technical, and we had to enter and stear away from some rather large rocks, while the current was heading straight into a wall, so a little more interesting than just riding waves out.
I did have a little swim about two thirds of the way down, trying to avoid some meaty waves I caught an eddyline and ended up flipping myself over. Instead of waiting for Raymi to come and flip me over my skirt decided to pop off, meaning I was now having a full on swim, good job the weather wasn't too bad.
We finished near the Mangaweka campground and practiced some manouvres along the way such as ferry glides, getting into and out of eddys, and seal launches which were all good. Our return journey back to Ohakune took about an hour, after a stop for a well earned long black and meat pie!