The Whanganui River Journey

Alright. So I think I left off after the Tongariro Northern Circuit. Now you get to hear about my river trip! I had been talking to Karin, one of the women I was hiking the circuit with, about the river trip and she was all up for a go at it too, so we called around, got ourselves geared up, and off we went! (Obviously you have to do a 3-day river trip after a 3-day hiking trip, just to even out your muscles, ya know?) Whakapapa Visitors Center I decided to stop at Whakapapa Visitors Center (in Tongariro National Park) on the way down to National Park, where we were staying to be picked up for the river trip the next morning. They have some great info displays about volanism, biodiversity and invasive species in the park. Here's a couple cool things that I learned there: 1) They had "Did you know" facts about each of the invasive species described in the exhibit. One of them was about Stoats, a weasel-like animal. It is "Female stoats are able to breed when they are very young. A 17-day-old stoat - blind, deaf, and almost immobile - was mated and produced 13 kits." Does that sound incredibly inhumane to anyone else? It sounds like the articles about frat parties and roofies and such, if you ask me. 2) The invasive lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) eradication program is called 'Aborta contorta' - how funny is that?? 3) During the Taupo eruption in 186 AD (the most violent anywhere in the world in the last 5,000 years), ash was sent 50 kms in the air, and a pyroclastic flow (fast-moving clouds of ash and debris like from Mt. St. Helens) moved through the landscape at about 600-900 kms/hour!! It burned and buried everything in its path for up to 80 kms. Get this - the pyroclastic flow overtopped Mt. Tongariro!!! Day 1 on the river We were up and off on the river around noon (later than we wanted, but we were going through an outfitter, so we didn't really have much choice in the matter). We canoed through the coolest landscape of carved sandstone cliffs. When I say cliffs, think of 5 times the size of the ones on the southern MN rivers. They were enormous! And they all had the most unique patterns of how the water had carved shapes in them. And the waterfalls - there were waterfalls at least every 5 minutes along the way, seriously. Many of them were tiny, just little trickles over the rock, but it was the variety of stages that was fascinating. Some of the newer ones just skated over the surface of the rock, while others had already carved their own gorges back into the cliffs. Some waterfalls were so far back that although we could hear the roar of the falling water quite clearly, we couldn't see the waterfall itself. We did quite well getting through the class 2 rapids. Another pair of women who was canoeing the river wasn't so lucky. Or maybe they were - becuase they certainly got some unique memories! They managed to go backwards through 2 rapids, flip their canoe, get stuck on a rock and then shallow rapids... and were still laughing about it when we saw them at the end of the day. Their only comment was that they were waiting to crash into a jetboat the next day. Luckily we didn't see too many jetboats, since they are noisy and feel totally out of place in such generally secluded wilderness. We arrived at the John Coull Hut in time for a swim before dinner. Carrying our gear up the banks and UP to the hut was quite the hike, but so cool up there at the top. Everything was built on wooden boardwalks and being surrounded by the forest and perched on a bluff, I felt a bit like I was living in the treehouses of Swiss Family Robinson, one of my favorite dreams as a child. AND, the hut wardens took us out that night along one of the boardwalks to show us the glow worms that lived in the underbrush along it. We had to kneel down to look up under the hanging leaves and we were treated to the most wonderful sight! I felt like I was looking in on a little fairy village! Day 2 We just cruised down the river. Karin took the helm today and did a great job, never having steered a canoe before. Personally, I think she did better than me, but she insists not. I don't know... We had more excellent scenery and lots of floating and talking time. We also stopped partway through for lunch and to hike up to the "Bridge to Nowhere" which really is quite funny. A bunch of settlers decided to farm this land (don't ask me why? I would never think you could farm these bluffs!) and built this ornate, concrete bridge to transfer their supplies. It is half an hour's hike in from the main river up a tributary and is literally in the middle of nowhere. Yet I felt like I was in a botanical garden or something. It was good to get out and stretch a bit, too. We perfected the art of standing up in the canoe during the calm patches on the river, one at a time, to stretch out our backs and legs. We ended up at Tieke Marae that night, a Marae (Maori meeting house) that is also a DOC (Department of Conservation) Hut. Our whole crew of hut-to-hut travellers hung out on the porch along with a big rooster who strutted around our feet. It got dark and we heard a rustling in our food bags, which were sitting out on the floor on the porch, just 2 meters from where our group was sitting. We jumped up thinking the rooster had managed to find our food, but when we shined our headlamps thataway, we found a possum staring back at us! This possum was huge! So much bigger than I'd pictured. I was thinking somewhere along the lines of a rabbit size, but this one was closer to a raccoon. Luckily, we were able to scare it off before it had a chance to eat any of our food, which we promptly put inside and shut the door. I was mentioning the size of the possum to an Australian guy that Karin and I were talking to later and he said that he thinks they get bigger here than in Australia (where they were introduced from) because they have such an abundant food source and no natural predators (thus why they're one of the number one most destructive invasive species. They eat something like 22kilos of vegetation a night. Is that right? Sorry. I've forgotten the exact fact. But its a whole heckuva lot.) The Last Day We had a nice canoeride out. We cherished those last moments in the wilds before we had to get back and head into town. It downpoured for a short while, just in time for us to pull over for lunch. As we were eating, the sun came out again and we had a nice paddle the whole way back. Whats up with rain on the last day of our tramps, anyway? That's what happened on the Northern Circuit as well! But anyway, we had the 3 biggest rapids of the trip, one of which we almost swamped, but stayed upright. We later found out that the women who had such an eventful time in the rapids on the first day had managed to flip their canoe going through this one, WHILE ON FILM! One of the guys who had stayed at the huts with us had a video camera and after he and his girlfriend got through, he turned around to video the next people, who happened to be Claire and Sharon, and oh, did they put on a show! They were going through, riding the pressure waves, looking all hardcore and then, flip! Over they go and next thing you see is the two of them swimming with the canoe. Karin and I were lagging behind, savoring our time on the water and didn't get to see the actual event, but we defintely watched it multiple times back at the landing. All of us were just cracking up and Claire and Sharon were making everyone watch it because it was just too funny to miss. Dang! Alright. Its getting late here and I'm going to try to take off to hike out to a gannet (sea bird) colony. I have to do it at just the right time, since you have to plan around the tides, so I'd better head out. I'll update you on Napier at a later date.