On-the-Road Tales

River Valley is renowned for its Grade 5 river rafting. White water rafting has always been on my ‘list of things to do before I die’ but I was never quite able to cross it off for one reason or another. We got suited up once again and the instructor I sat next to on the way to the launch was an absolute header. He had guided all over the world and some interesting tales to tell. My guide was fantastic and made me feel a bit more confident about rafting Level 5 my first time out.

The beginning of the river was fairly calm, couple of humble practice rapids. The scenery was great cruising though this stretch of nature. Once we would complete a small drop – our guide would make us turn around and climb back up it to get a good photo. The other boat – with a newer less experienced instructor was having a bit of trouble so our guide would hop out and help them out. He was all over the place. On our first major drop, he had us reneter and gave us an overleft command in the whirlpool. This promptly flipped the entire boat unmercifully and dumped us into the “fresh” water. Yowser, that was cold. Catching my breath I got pulled back in by a huge Dane. Reassuring to have a 6 footer on our boat for rescue.

Most of us managed to stay in the boat during the rapids. I did learn no matter how well you pay attention or follow directions, if the other poeple in the boat are not withit – you suffer the consequences. I kept slapping the hungover chick in front of me when she would fail to start paddling in time and slam us into a rock. I also got wacked in the head with the body of a flying Danish girl who failed to secure herself inside the boat during a 5 foot waterfall drop. Crazy little sport, never know what the river is going to do but certainly exciting. We made it though relatively inscathed and stupidly listened to our guide when he wanted to stand the boat vertical. On the third attempt we were successful for about .6 seconds before we dumped ourselves in the river once again.

We showered and warmed up at the lodge before continuing onto the capital city on the far south of the north island, Wellington.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 17th, 2007 at 2:50 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.