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!

January

Happy 2012! We started the New Year with a party at a friend’s house and then moved onto a bar in Ohakune for the countdown. Since then things have been steady away at work but are a bit quieter now it’s the end of the school summer holidays here.
A couple of weeks ago we did the Tongariro Crossing, it’s a 19.4km walk that claims to be the best 1 day walk in the country. It was pretty popular and although we were on the bus at 5.50am and walking at 7.30am there were plenty of people there already. The walk starts at Mangatepopo hut, with the 1st hour of the walk to Soda Springs being pretty easy and only slightly uphill. We stopped at Soda Springs for a snack and a drink before tackling the Devils Steps. The Devils Steps are a man-made staircase that takes you in-between Mt Tongariro and Mt Ngarahoe (aka Mt Doom LOTR) and we were told by our bus driver that the steps would take 2 hours to climb. Initially quite worried as 2 hours is a very long time to be walking up steps, but thankfully it only took 35mins. Clearly the bus driver is very unfit. From here you walk through the South Crater which is thankfully very flat! As we were walking through James looked around and said ‘this must be what the moon looks like!’ Made us laugh for ages! From here it’s a steep but short climb to the top of the Red Crater where the land surrounding it is red due to the mineral content. There were still a few pockets of snow dotted around, but as this is the highest point and 1900m above sea level that’s not surprising! The rest of the walk from here was all downhill. First it was down the Emerald Lakes, which are beautiful and then further on is the Blue Lake, equally as lovely. From the blue lake you walk to the Ketatahi hut, where we stopped and had lunch. After the hut the walk is quite long and there is not much to see, some people suggest turning around and walking back at the Blue Lake, but then you couldn’t say you had done the Crossing! We finished earlier than anticipated and couldn’t get a bus back to Ohakune at the time; however there was a bus willing to drop us off at the pub so we could have a drink while we waited – even better!
Only 7 weeks now and we will be flying out of NZ and heading to Dubai for a week before coming home! Looking forward to seeing everyone, it’s been too long!

Christmas 2011

This year for Christmas we hung out a friend's farm which was pretty cool. On Christmas eve another friend of ours arrived back in Ohakune on the train and we met him with a banner on the platform, not sure everyone else on the train/platform knew what was happening! Everyone then came down to ours for lunch and Robyn whipped up some venison wraps. We then had a nice afternoon sitting in the sun having a few beers, before moving on the Canadian Embassy for dinner and a sleep in my case.
Christmas day morning we unwrapped our presents and did a bit of Skyping, and I finally signed up to Facebook....peer pressure!
Then it was out to the farm for a lovely big lunch and couple of games of volleyball, and secret santa present swapping. We ended up with some locally produced honey and a recipe book from Womens Health magazine. The farm house had lovely gardens and a few horses, one of which took a shine to Robyn... We ended the day in our little tent camping out under the stars with a view of Mt Ruapehu, another different Christmas for us.
Boxing day was pretty low key as there were some sore heads on the farm, not ours though! Sheree whipped up some lovely eggy breakfast for us and we then dropped the Canadians off, came home and just chilled out.
We have a pretty busy week here at Canoe Safaris until New Year, then a few busy weeks in January. There's lots of pics from Christmas on Facebook anyway!