We made our way to Hokitika to catch up with Alan, an Irish paddler we first met in Uganda (and then on the ferry to France last September when we told him we were going to NZ – some day we’ll meet up in Ireland!). While waiting for him to get back from a river we went mountain biking around the town. They were so late back from the river, they passed on paddling the next day, so Sean and I set off to do the Lower Kakapotiha with “Andy England”. The trip was pretty good but there was so little water it was quite scrapey. We spent most of the trip waiting for a gorge with a swingbridge at the start which was the signal for the hard part – turns out that the swingbridge has been gone for years! I managed to get my boat pinned on a drop but it came out easily enough in the end, basically by Sean walking across the river and pulling it out, despite Andy’s efforts at climbing the steep hill on the far side to set up complicated rope systems. T’was a fun day on the river none the less. The next day we joined Alan and the other Irish in having a lazy Sunday at the campsite.
On Monday we decided to move on, so drove down to the Waiho River, which flows directly out of the Fox Glacier. It was very very very cold and at the level it was at it was flowing really quickly down a channel with nearly no eddies along its entire length, complete with actual huge lumps of ice floating downstream! Just to make it more difficult the water is all grey too so stoppers are quite hard to see. Aisling and I both skirted one hole and then went straight into another one at one stage. The cold water got to us and it seems we both lost the ability to roll and swam. It turns out that the river was also quite shallow too so I banged my knee trying to get to the bank! My advice is as follows:
1: Don’t get on glacier rivers – they’re freezing!
2: If you are silly enough to get on, don’t capsize.
3: If you do capsize keep trying to roll up all the way down the river if you have to!
The next day we carried on down to Wanaka. On the way we stopped to ogle the Gates of Haast and the Blue Pools, both pretty crowded with tourists – so much for the south island feeling remote! We found a campsite with a swimming pool and slides, so livened the place up a bit with our shrieks when playing there before going to bed and again first thing in the morning! We finally dragged ourselves away from them and set off to Queenstown, stopping to paddle the Roaring Meg section of the Kawarau River along the way. It was fun, loads of whirlpools and boils all the way down. A company in Queenstown runs river sledging trips on that section of the river too and a group overtook us just above the main drop. It was funny to watch them just floating down through the middle of the hole, most without a clue what they were doing.
We followed that up by a day wandering around Queenstown. Queenstown is hailed as a party town and fantastic location for all outdoor activities. It's also known as beng very expensive - probably because all the outdoor activities are quite costly (which we avoided). We decided to give the party town a test run and got ourselves dolled up on Friday night. The pubs were busy but we found them and the town in general very lacking in atmosphere that night. The streets were nearly empty. So, to sum up Queenstown - lots of outdoor shops and plenty of people around during the day, lots to spend your money on, but not much going on.
The Karawau River just out the road from Queenstown is quite another matter though! I’ve already told you about the Roaring Meg Section, but there’s plenty more, including the Dog Leg Section, going underneath a bungy jump in one place, which the lads did before our big night out. I was taking a break from all this strenuous paddling (?) and decided to cycle the shuttle instead. At this stage there were 8 of us travelling around together, 6 Irish: Sean and I, Alan and three other outdoor instructors, Aisling, John and Liz, together with John from Alaska and another John from Sweden. As there were so many Johns they became known as JP, Alaska and Swede respectively. So, when they finished the Dog Leg section Swede and Alaska were going to carry on downstream to run the Nevis Bluff section, quite a gnarly bit of water. We busily set up rescue in various places, holding token ropes and paddles along with our cameras that were the only thing we were going to use in reality. Both boys made it through fine though showing us how it should be done, and both feeling quite happy before our big night out!
On the other side of Queenstown is the Shotover Gorge, a river that has a bungy jump and canyon swing on it and is rafted and jet boated! Despite all this activity the dirt road down to the get on is dreadful and rental cars are prohibited from going on it! So eventually we got down to the put in and were surrounded by rafters arriving by bus, mountain bike and helicopter. I kindly did the shuttle again and rattled my way back up to the main road. To collect the other cars Sean and Swede mountain biked down the dirt road, taking 21 minutes to bike down (Sean says he would have been much faster if he didn’t have to wait for the Swede, Swede says it was terrifying) and 22 minutes to drive back up again. It might be a good river but I don’t think we’ll be taking the van back down that road again!
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