We woke up to blue sky after a good night's sleep and took our time, having a leisurely breakfast, making lunch, drying our tent fly and tarp and as a result didn't get going until a ridiculous 11am. Once on the river we realized the map showed that we had some six hours of canoeing ahead of us that day, so we just kept paddling with a quick stop at Poukaria campsite, lunch on the go in the canoe, and arrived at the landing for the Whakahoro campsite close to 4:45pm. Again a beautiful and warm day on the river with some shade from fluffy clouds here and there and plenty of rapids to keep it interesting. We even managed to get stuck on some rocks in a rapid the middle of the river, causing quite a bit of water to come into the canoe. When we finally managed to dislodge the canoe, the water inside made the canoe very unstable but luckily we managed to keep it balanced until we reached the nearest shore and were able to bail out the water. We did not see a single other canoe all day. Although we had read that one of the campsites had a long walk uphill from the landing to the camping area, we were unpleasantly surprised how steep the path was, and then the gravel road from there, and how long (close to) 350m is when carrying two loaded barrels per person. After getting four barrels to the campsite our last barrel and the rest of our things got a ride up the road on the truck of the ranger who just happened to come back. The campsite itself was basically a field with two cooking shelters, one of which was used by the ranger and two other DOC workers so we used the other one. There was one other couple camping at the campsite but they drove to it and cooked near their tent. We were the only canoers staying there. When we were eating the ranger brought us some eggs (for some extra protein) and later came with some (uncooked) hash browns both of which we saved for breakfast the next morning. We chatted with the ranger some more a little later and walked down the road a ways to see what was there (a field with some horses, fields with cows, and more road as well as the access to apparently famous Blue Duck Station). The sun set at 8:45pm or so and we were in bed shortly after.
No comments:
Post a Comment