You shouldn’t be here

Mile 845 / KM 1360
Taumarunui to Wanganui

Song stuck in my head: None. I was busy surviving.

I miss: Hiking! We’ve been on a canoe for a week and I can’t wait to get back on trail.


"You do not want to be on the river when there’s trees floating by...". I was sipping my instant coffee and the words of the guy who had given us our safety briefing were ringing in my ears when I saw a big tree floating by. It was early in the morning and my socks and shoes were still drenched from the day before. It hadn't stopped raining for the past 17 hours.

"Sooo... should we go?" Fred asked when it stopped at last about two hours later. "I guess so" I said "it's now or never". So we packed up our things, shoved everthing into waterproof barrels, attached them to our canoe and we were about to push it into the water when three rangers on a jet boat stopped by at what was left of our landing. They told us it would probably be safer to get out at Whakahoro about four hours down the river, rather than continuting all the way to the campsite we were supposed to stay the night.

Fred and I started paddling. The water level was 4 meters higher than it had been the day before and rapids were no longer visible. I am all for adventure but it is quite sketchy floating down a river without seeing what's ahead or below you. At times I couldn't see a thing because my glasses became useless in the rain, so Fred had to do the steering and look for rocks at the same time. We almost hit a massive one but managed to keep the canoe stable. Andy and Moni who were travelling with our group weren't as lucky. They got hit by two big waves and their canoe started sinking. Just by chance the rangers on the jet boat happened to pass them and were able to rescue them out of the now fast flowing cold river. The problem with the high water level is that if you flip, you can't get to shore (because there is no longer a shore) to flip the boat back around yourself so you're dependent on others to help you out. When there's so much debris floating in the water, the jet boats can't get out on the river though so you're on your own.

Looking back I'm glad we called the shots and got out at Whakahoro. There's a closed off shelte which is all I longed for that afternoon. No matter how great your rain gear is, after a certain point you are going to get wet and ultimately you'll also get cold. I was shivering when we finally opened the door to the shelter.

Whakahoro is a ‘town’ in the middle of nowhere. Population: 8. There's the shelter, a farm house, a lot of sheep and the "Blue Duck Caffee". The next town - or let's say shopping opportunity - is more than an hour drive away. The caffee is where I spent most of the following day because we were adviced not to go back on the river until the water level would drop. We were warned about the whirlpools further down, which were now more than a meter deep. Even the jet boats had problems getting over them.

That night my food bag became the main target of a rat. It tried to steal my breakfast muffins but knocked over an empty wine bottle during the attempt which woke me up. My first reaction was to wake up Fred. I thought it was important to let her know that there were rats everywhere. She didn't seem impressed and went right back to sleep, so I had to handle the situation myself. Thinking I was super smart I tied the bag to the bunk bed right above me but the rat didn't seem to care about me being there and tried to get into the bag anyways. When I heard a rattling noise right beside my head I got so spooked that I decided to hang the bag outside just so I wouldn't have to deal with the problem any longer. Sometimes I wonder how I've made it through my outdoor adventures. I still freak out about animals creeping around my tent at night and just don't like crawling things or insects in general. I was paddling with Fred in the rain when I tried to grab a snack out of my pouch. There was an ugly ass black spider crawling up on me and I yelled and threw my hands up in the air which made me lose my paddle. Luckily there was a canoe right bind ours to pick it up but I looked at Fred and she just shook her head and rolled her eyes.

The rain was hitting the roof of the shelter and I questioning why exactly I was about to get up to spend 5 hours canoing to the John Coull Hut. I still don't know how I got myself out of bed but eventually I did. We got the green light to head out because the water level had dropped enough over night. Don’t ask me how, because it was stilll raining so hard that at times I didn't even look at what was ahead of me and just paddled as hard as I possibly could. The whirlpools were still there and scary. My arms felt like they were about to fall off when we reached the hut for lunch. At that point I was kind of over the whole canoe thing and I felt like I had had enough adventure for the day. Little did I know we'd be going another 4 hours after that. We all huddled around a little oven and tried to dry our clothes before we got back into our canoes. And then it happened... The sun was back and for the first time in days we were able to cruise and enjoy the river rather than just survive it. I had pictured this thing more like a booze cruise and less like the out of control hardcore coanoing trip it had been until that point.

"Non of you should be on the water right now!" was the first thing Daryl, the owner of a campsite in Ramanui, said when we attached our canoes to his landing the same evening. It had been a long day and we just laughed and loaded our barrels on to his ATV. "You can have cabin 4. Not going to charge you extra for it" he said. Gotta love Daryl <3 What a legend. He just zips around on his ATV all day, hunts down possums and runs the camp and a bar which is why we ended up going past the John Coull hut. When we heard that we were going to have to wait another day before we could go back on the water I wasn't even fazed because the place was nice, we still had a couple bottles of wine and the sun was finally shining.

Daryl ❤