Rangitikei River Expedition

1/18/2007 - 1/20/2007

Our expedition on the Rangitikei River began when we drove from the raft shop to the boat drop-in point in the morning. The drive was beautiful, with tons of green rolling hills replete with sheep. We had three guides for the trip, including kiwis Paul and Tim and Cam the Australian. Basically we were going down the river with one huge gear raft, 3 sit-on kayaks, 3 hard-shell kayaks, and the guides' 2 playboat kayaks. Here is a picture of the drop-in point. It was nice an hot, but the water was still freezing.

Since I've never been that fond of kayaking, I wasn't sure what to expect of this trip. Fortunately, it turned out to be great. The kayaks we used were much more maneurverable thatn others that I have used in the past, and there were some good rapids that we went through. The scenery was also gorgeous with massive dirt rocks surrounding the river. Here are some pictures. There was even one place that we floated by that had been a backdrop for one of the Lord of the Rings movies. I was asking Cam if that had caused an increase in their number of clients, and he joked that they now get a lot more LOTR freaks (he said some of them actually brough GPS devices to make sure that they were seeing the real thing from the movie).

Overall the trip was very relaxing and fun. Basically we just had to ride down the river and hang out at the camp sites, and the guides did all the rest. They did all the cooking (great food) and setting up the camp while we played games and relaxed. I felt kind of bad that they were doing all the work, but I guess that's their job. When we finished rafting on the last day, we packed all the stuff up and went back to the camping spot we were at 3 nights ago and got situated for the night. Pacific Challenge group 1 was actually at the same spot since they are doing a river trip tomorrow morning for a few hours, so we got to meet them. My PCUE group and the PC1 (group 1) group went out to a bar to hand out and have dinner, so I was able to meet some of their group members, which was nice.