Today began our 5 day rafting and kayaking expedition down the Clarence River. Unfortunately, the morning had a rough start because somehow the refrigerator cooling all of our food for the expedition got unplugged. We through everything in a working freezer thus delaying our departure for an hour or so. After loading our chilly bin (kiwi for cooler) with ice, we threw in the food and were off. It's not always easy for me, but sometimes I just have to forget about all the things I learned in Microbiology class.
After driving about 4 hours to Hanmer Springs, we met up with our guides at the put-in point, which was pretty much out in the middle of nowhere. It also happened to be raining and freezing cold. Our guides, Nathan and Slea, certainly weren't optimistic about the weather today, as shown by the dry suits they had on. When the guy running the trip told Adam that the weather was supposed to be "unsettled" all week, I started to get quite worried about how enjoyable this trip would be. Nobody was really talking, so I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one thinking that. Fortunately, we got wet suits, spray jackets, and booties. However, we were all still freezing. After packing up all our stuff on the gear boat, we took off. We had 5 sit-on kayaks, 4 hard-shell kayaks, a raft, and a ton of gear.
Things improved once we started paddling on the water. After spending 5 days on sea kayaks in Abel Tasman last week, these river kayaks were a dream to paddle. Since we started in the late afternoon, we only spent about 2 hours on the river today. My hands and feet were definitely numb. The water, however, was surprisingly warm (at least relative to the cold air and rain). Despite the cold, overall there were a ton of rapids, and it was pretty fun. When we got to our campsite, we took our gear off the raft and set up our tents. Fortunately, it stopped raining, and the sun came out. Basically we then cooked dinner and went to sleep. Here are a few pictures from the first campsite. I wish I could have snapped more photos on this trip, but my camera will die if it gets wet unlike the Olympus cameras some other people on my trip have.
All right, I'm not going to waste your time detailing each of the 5 days. Basically, we were blessed with some superb weather for the rest of the trip thus making it so much more enjoyable than it could have been otherwise. We put in some long days paddling down the river. Overall we traveled 200 km (a little over 120 miles) down the river and dropped 700 meters in elevation. The scenery was incredible, and what made it great was how it changed as we floated down the river. Initially the terrain was pretty hilly and quite desolate with practically no trees. There were some really cool rock formations, and we saw tons of goats, cows, sheep, geese, and even a rabbit. As we progressed down the river, we gradually saw more and more trees until it became quite lush towards the end. The scenery was really different from that of the Rangitikei River.
In addition to the scenery, the kayaking and rafting were great. Sometimes it was a little tiring to be on the river for like 9 hours a day, but there were a ton of rapids that were really fun to go through. We all definitely took a few spills, but everybody came out pretty much intact. I was a little worried about this trip when it was freezing cold on the first day, but it worked out wonderfully! Here are a few more pics. They don't really do justice to the beautiful scenery, but you can get some idea.
Here are a few goats. Not really a good picture, however.
Here is a picture of the take-out point. This was just before the Clarence River met the ocean.
Left to right: Slea, Adam, Nathan, Nathan (I'm this one)
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