The Whanganui Journey: Five Days of Rain, Rapids, and Reconnecting in the Woods of New Zealand
It has been, to say the least, a whacky month. From the end of my program in Tanzania to hiking Kili to an incredible, blissful ten days at home, straight into another 30+ hour international travel day to exploring a new city and country to five days spent doing something that felt weirdly like home, I am a bit exhausted. Nevertheless, I can’t say I’m regretting any of my decisions so far– as hard as it was to flit in and out of home, I’m so grateful Tiger and I got the chance to paddle this incredible river, and I have the excitement of seeing family on the not-too-distant-feeling horizon.
So far my time in New Zealand has been lovely, easier than Tanzania, full of logistics and hand pies, long bus rides and more sheep than I can count. I arrived the morning of the 30th, shockingly well-rested, and spent the day exploring Auckland by myself before Tiger arrived, going for an exploratory run on the waterfront which turned into a dip in the harbor. We ate our way into the new year, bopping from restaurant to food hall to restaurant on the 31st, culminating in a fun, tourist-y New Years Eve countdown at the Sky City Tower downtown.
On the 1st, we woke up early to move out of our hotel and get on an InterCity bus from Auckland to Tamaurunui, where we planned to shop for necessities for our canoe trip before a pickup from our canoe rental company, who would take us to their base for a free night of accommodation before the trip.
The major difficulty of this trip so far has been that Tiger’s checked bag did not make it from Brisbane. We had hoped it would arrive before we left the city on the 1st, but when it didn’t, Tiger bought cheap socks and underwear at the equivalent of a Dollar Tree, and we confirmed that we could rent all the other necessary gear from the canoe company. In addition to all of his clothes, I had shoved our tent, my rain coat, and my down jacket into Tiger’s checked bag way back in Boston, not considering the consequences for a moment. As will become clear, this was a very, very bad call.
We arrived in Taumarunui at around 1:30pm on the 1st, and, after a quick perusal of our shopping options, instantly understood why some people think our small town is boring. Exactly three stores were open on New Years Day: the McDonald’s at the far edge of town, the Four Square, a tiny grocery store, and the Bakehouse Cafe, a greasy-smelling chicken and chips joint.
Priority one was food, so we went to the Cafe, where Tiger ate the worst burger of his life, and I ate fried chicken better than any I consumed in the country of Tanzania, along with some terrible sweet (?) fries. People kept confusing us for thru-hikers tackling Te Araroa, the long trail that encompasses both islands, which was kind of flattering but also made me think we looked grosser than we should have.
Next I headed to the Four Square, grabbing a cart only to realize I had absolutely no plans for what we would eat for the next five days and feeling extremely overwhelmed and homesick. I’m pretty proud of myself for the shop that followed–although we were a bit food-anxious during the trip, we never ran out, and we ate a vegetable every day! It feels good to be able to walk into a foreign grocery store with no plans and adequately outfit a five-day canoe trip. After that, Tiger set off on a journey for contact solution (which was in the checked bag) finding none, and we bought the WORST rain jackets known to man, some of those flimsy elementary-school-folder-material rain poncho ordeals, which went down to our knees and snapped closed. We prayed there would be no rain.
At this point I hoped the canoe company was on the way to pick us up, and after some crossed wires and some frantic emails, being with service but without a New Zealand phone number, they eventually came for us around 4. During the wait, we sat on the town’s one park bench across from the bus station, and more people confused us for TA hikers. I felt very naive at this moment.
Our trip to the base was beautiful and lively. The accents in this corner of New Zealand are strong, and even though we speak the same language, I sometimes feel like I am back in the early days of Tanzania, trying to slowly decode the swallowed vowels and slang of my sort-of mother tongue. This will pass, I know. Our driver, the owner of the company, was lovely, asking and answering all sorts of questions.
Our night at the base was deeply weird but completely satisfactory. We had a bed in a private room, which I hadn’t expected, including an in-room shower with hot water. The building was overrun by a 16+ person church group, with kids literally throwing themselves against our door (the closest to the common room) all night. Dinner I cooked in a microwave, definitely the worst thing I’ve ever cooked for Tiger–deeply al dente pasta with barely steamed broccoli chunks, raw garlic, and pasta bake sauce. Ater moving our gear into the provided barrels, their insurance against wet gear for inexperienced boaters, we guessed, we fell asleep–before the sun, which sets late as hell here.
Day 1: Cherry Grove to Poukaria
Day one started bright and early, with a packed-up room, oatmeal, and departure with the one other group of two starting with us at 7am and doing the full five-day trip. As is true of all of the Great Walks and tracks in general here, they can be completed in their entirety or in chunks, with usually more day-trippers than thru-hikers/paddlers The drive took around 20 minutes, during which time we picked up our guide for the riverside briefing. We met the other group of two, named Harriet and Bronwyn, who became our buddies during the trip, as we stayed at all of the same campsites and ended up eating and playing cards together every evening. After a very rudimentary briefing (“the person in the front is the engine, the person in the back steers” and the like) they shoved us off and downriver we went.
About a week before our trip started I got very nervous about how hard the paddling would be, and if we might be completely out of our depth to take on this river. All of the literature recommended only intermediate paddlers paddle the river, but it quickly became clear to us that they’d let any old person on the water, and that we were going to be the most experienced people in our general vicinity. I also watched some videos of people paddling the river, and the rapids looked quite akin to what we’d paddled on the Allagash or St. Croix, which turned out to be very much the case. When we arrived, other people at base seemed like complete beginners, and after the third employee asked if we had ever canoed before, we began to feel much more confident in our abilities.
The first day started off with some pretty significant rapids, and stunning views of farmland and lush, green hills on both sides of the river. One of the rapids tipped our new friends, who informed us that the barrels were definitely not waterproof, upping the ante for staying upright. The weather was fair and warm that first day, with no wind and the beautiful feeling of new adventure that the beginning of a river trip instills. The rapids were fun and we were moving confidently, with most of the excitement coming from big water rather than from dodging sneaky rocks. Paddling a boat we didn’t care about helped too, as we were much less worked up about bumping off of ledges or scraping over logs, which still didn’t happen much.
In general we moved much faster on this river than we’re used to, regularly covering more than 10 miles in 5-6 hours. Early in this day we stopped at a sign advertising “Lauren’s Lavender Farm, two minute walk”, and ascended one hundred plus steps to emerge into an idyllic little farm, bees buzzing through the lavender rows. We had a lavender latte and some scones in the sunshine before continuing on, a wonderful side-trip for the first day.
We paddled until around 2:30, shooting past the traditional first stopping point at one of the hut/campsite combination stops until we reached our campsite, nestled on one of the green, grassy hills. The site was gorgeous, with fast-moving water to shush us to sleep and easy access. We shared it with our new friends and a loud group of millennial Australians, who I was wary of at first but, as the trip progressed, came to realize were some of the most tolerable people on the river. They shared their delicious drip coffee with us, I went for a chilly float, and we set up our tent underneath a small grove of trees.
This was the moment when the first sign of chaos to come set in. Our tent was very broken in pretty much every meaningful way: one of the doors didn’t zip closed, the fly was far too small for the tent, and the poles were too small, meaning it sagged in on every side. It was far from waterproof, and the only compliment I can give it is that the floor was very tarp-like, which didn’t even help when we needed it. As a drizzle set in and we donned our horrible raincoats, a slight sense of dread set in.
The rest of the evening was lovely, with everyone cooking underneath the one sheltered picnic table and us cementing our friendship with Harriet and Bronwyn over several rounds of Presidents. Tiger was also sick for the first chunk of our trip, so we hit the hay early that night, once again asleep before the sun set.
Day 2: Poukaria to Mangapapa
Day two was another lovely one, but did start with our only significant on-river rainfall, which our raincoats did not-great at protecting us from (but they did keep us warmer, which is the true point of raincoats, as my friend Daniel Graves likes to say). This put a small damper on our spirits, but we knew we only needed a sunny afternoon to dry out. At one point this morning Tiger said “so where is today’s cafe?”, which made me realize we had come very far from the wilderness of the Allagash or the Moose.
The cafe that day was, in fact, lovely, perched high over the river in a wonderful little village that reminded me a ton of Futa. Much of the river reminded me of the Futa and surrounding tributaries, with the lush gorges and far-off farmland. We had lunch on a sun-soaked porch surrounded by big black dogs asleep in the warmth, which felt very right.
Onwards to our site, which was probably my favorite of the trip, a grassy field perched above rocky ledges pulling eddies beneath them, which made for bad swimming but wonderful sitting, reading, and view-taking-in. We arrived to a sunny afternoon, laid out our damp clothes, and proceeded to engage in our separate favorite camp activities– for me, always a swim, a journal, and some reading time. For T, usually a nap, a snack, and some time with his audiobook.
I also wrote my speech for Andrea’s funeral at this site. I have hesitated to mention this monumental upheaval in my family’s life in these posts, because in many ways my life since her passing has felt made up of incongruous parts, dealing with the immense grief of this loss amidst once-in-a-lifetime adventures. I have not found some magically perfect way to balance this precarious time, other than giving myself the space to be alone more than I might choose to otherwise, finding pockets of peace where I can feel my feelings and giving myself the grace to do so. Writing my speech was one example of this, where I pulled myself away from the adventure and adrenaline of the canoe trip to be alone, reflect, and put words on paper.
After a few hours of this alone time in the sun, I made dinner on a picnic table we shared with our new friends. We all played cards again, this time a few rounds of Sevens, and turned in before sundown.
Day 3: Mangapapa to Mangawaiiti
It was a tough night, and a tougher morning. We woke up completely soaked, lying in one huge puddle, dry bags wet through, sleeping pads dripping, feet damp and very, very cold. Tiger had it worse than me, with his horrible rented yoga mat of a sleeping pad and not-warm-to-begin-with sleeping bag. We took some time to lament our situation, dry off as best we could in the still-spitting dawn, and try to get ready for the day. As we finished breakfast, our stove flew apart, which sort of felt like the last straw and a practical joke. Without fixing it, we packed our sopping boat and headed down to the water.
We were slow going and very grumpy, and as a result got off last, after the obnoxious big group paddling in front of us. Passing them was its own challenge, as their two boats full of teenage boys were up to incredibly stupid antics, zig-zagging across the channel. The day passed pretty easily, with no major rapids and similar mileage to the day before. Labeled the most picturesque section of the river, we were treated to incredible views of the forested gorge on either side of us, with little caves and waterfalls at almost every turn.
After 10.5 miles of paddling in two hours, we arrived at the first site on the map for a quick snack, then quickly shoved off so we could stay ahead of the family. There was no cafe this day, so we lunched outside a hut in a blessedly sunny campsite spot. Our stove ended up being a pretty easy fix, so we had a delicious lunch of hot, garlicky refried bean and avocado wraps. Things were looking up, and we paddled hard to try to take advantage of the sunny afternoon.
This site was probably my least favorite, with a bitch of a walk up a hill, including probably 50 steps, and a horribly slippery, muddy, sandy launch with very little room to maneuver. The site was also too small to really accommodate all of the people we knew were coming down the river, and we were desperate for a site under tree cover to avoid another wet night, so we hauled ass to get our stuff in place before anyone else showed up. Within a few minutes, we had secured a spot off to the side of the site, under the trees, and all of our stuff was laid out in a sunny patch on a picnic table. With a heavy sigh of relief, I sat down to read my book as three big groups rolled up to the site and navigated what spots were left.
My swim that evening was brief and muddy, and the site lost sunlight relatively early in the evening, being on the wrong side of the gorge for direct sunlight, which made for a chilly, but thankfully not wet, dinner time. We didn’t play cards and instead chatted with our buddies, who each night ate the most delicious-looking freeze-dried meals as we worked our way through more spicy ramen.
I fell asleep dry and thrilled to have warmed up, a million miles from where we woke up that morning.
Day 4: Mangawaiiti to Tieke Kainga
Our last full day had the shortest paddling distance and the excitement of a side excursion to the famous Bridge to Nowhere, built in the early 1900s to accommodate easier travel across a different river as a valley was being developed for farming. As one sign so aptly described, the developers spent a significant amount of time considering what materials to use to build the bridge without considering whether there needed to be a bridge at all. Only a couple of years after they finished building it, farming proved too onerous and the valley was abandoned. Now, the government maintains the bridge and a great trail network around it, meaning that, ironically, it receives more use now than when it was built.
We woke up early, ate fast, and shoved off before any other groups. It was only a two hour paddle to the landing for the hike, which was a total shit show of a landing spot (a theme for the second half of the river), with super-slick rounded rocks and no obvious place to tie-off, plus a two boat maximum in the one cove where you could reasonably pull off. It was a damp and cool morning, and we were both excited to move our legs for a while.
The walk was flat and fast, about half an hour along a tributary of the Whanganui, and the bridge was cooler than I expected, a well-maintained relic in the middle of nowhere. We read some more informational signs, took pictures, and headed back, having brought no snacks on our walk and feeling peckish.
Back on the river, we paddled hard to make it to the site for lunch. This was one of our more desperate periods of paddling of the whole week, as we steadily got hungrier, the wind picked up, and the site was nowhere in sight. Eventually I spotted one of the tell-tale green Department of Conservation signs a long ways off, and we played word games until we made it.
I had heard tell of a cafe near the campsite, so we tied up across the river from the hut, trekking uphill to find the supposed lodge there. I was hangry and grumpy at this point, and a bad adventure partner. After some false starts we found the lodge, perched on a tall hill with an incredible view of the river that reminded me a ton of some of my favorite sights in Futa.
Walking into the warm and food-smelling lodge, I asked a man if they sold food. “Well, what do you want?”, he asked, looking around the kitchen, where some children seemed to be eating sandwiches. Eventually we learned that he did not in fact work there, and they did not sell lunch (this I learned from the brochure, not the man, the nephew of the owners). As we walked out, stomachs rumbling, he asked “have you guys ever had venison?”. Sure!, we replied, confused about this non-sequitur and ready to go eat our beans on the other side of the river. As we put our shoes on he came back out and told us that he’d just shot a deer twenty minutes beforehand, and he’d be happy to give us some meat to take back to our campsite for lunch. We obviously said yes, and a few minutes later he returned with a sizable chunk of still-warm meat in a Ziploc bag. This was the day the vegetarian in me died forever, that meat was so welcome and so delicious.
Back across the river we paddled, and I fired up the camp stove, searing the meat in ragged hunks, the best we could do with our camping knives. We had a feast fit for kings of the woods that afternoon, venison and avocado in stove-charred wraps. I was dead silent as I cooked, feeling desperately hungry and knowing full well I had nothing productive to add to the world. “Do you want a snack?”, Tiger pleaded, knowing what was coming as I flicked raw meat from my knuckles. “No”, I snapped, an unpleasant beast for another half an hour until the first wrap hit my stomach.
That afternoon I puttered around the site doing tasks, filtering water, swimming, laying things out to dry, and finally doing dishes. The site also had a hut, with a wonderful communal kitchen and nicer facilities than the just-campsite sites, which we took full advantage of. I spent a while laying in the sun reading my book as dozens of people streamed into the site, which was probably overbooked because the last site on the river, another hour and a bit downstream, was closed for the season.
Tucked away in our sunny corner with our friends, it was nice to be away from the chaos, and we soaked in the afternoon sunshine, with this site thankfully being located on the sunny side of the gorge.
For our last night, we feasted yet again, with an appetizer of oatmeal, a main course of dehydrated pasta, and dessert of refried beans for Tiger. We played cards again and enjoyed the last rays of light, along with a sunshower that resulted in a stunning rainbow over the field. It was a wonderful last night, and the perfect way to end our last full day. We stayed up too late, almost until sundown (!) chatting and preparing for our early departure the next morning. We said goodbye to our new friends with the promise that we’d see them in Wellington, and turned in around 9:30.
Day 5: Tieke Kainga to Pipiriki
Our last half-day started at 5am, in the dark for the first time since New Years Eve. We packed up silently and with the efficiency of paddlers at the end of a river trip, and shoved off at 6am. The paddling was pretty easy, but we were both clearly done and deeply ready to get off the river, so vibes were pretty low. We also knew that the day was full of logistics that could go wrong, from us finishing too late to catch our ride to the bus, the ride coming too late to get on the bus, any number of details that could have gone wrong picking up our rental car in Auckland, our friend pick-up in Auckland going awry, and not yet having a place to stay that night, all of which had to happen before nightfall.
We made it to the first site, around the halfway point of the day’s mileage, with little wiggle room for the second half of paddling and the two biggest rapids to come. Fortunately, this meant we had the added help of faster moving water. Unfortunately, we soon turned into the strongest headwind of the trip, which we fought using tired arms for every inch we moved forwards. It was tough going for a while until we reached the final rapids of the trip, which were huge and very splashy, soaking my lower half twice in an hour.
We made it to the end at 10:15, smashing our goal of 11am and utterly wiped. We enjoyed the last of our food stores, I went for a swim, and we changed into drier clothes. Our ride was going to be an hour late, cutting it close for the bus, so we settled in, spreading our stuff out on a boat launch in the cold, grey, damp morning. I had suspected something like that might happen, and was glad for the extra built-in hour. Harriet and Bronwyn paddled in a little after 11 and offered us their leftover snacks, knowing how tight our timeline to catch the bus was, an incredible kindness.
Grant, the nearly-unintelligible Kiwi man we’d met our first night, came screaming in at 11:50am, we picked up our extra bags from a different van, and off we headed, with Grant driving at a remarkable pace in a huge van on teeny-tiny, barely two-way roads. Tiger and I both became instantly carsick as we sloshed around re-packing bags for the bus. Grant also chatted nonstop the entire time, with me struggling to jump in or answer questions over the sound of the trailer clattering behind us and my own pulse pounding in my ears.
After half an hour of this, we made it to Raetihi, with enough time to buy a pie (delicious roadtrip staples here, full of meat and cheese, absolutely delectable) before we hopped on the bus.
From there, everything went perfectly. The bus ride was fine, with both of us napping and reading, and the van pickup also went smoothly. Driving into Auckland (on the other side of the road) was stressful but successful, our friends were right where they said they would be, and the RV park was both easy to get to and incredibly well-equipped, with an incredible hot, strong shower that rocked my world. The only missing piece was Tiger’s missing bag, which had still not arrived in the week we’d been gone, but that’s for another post…
All in all, a spectacular journey, complete with amazing views, fun paddling, and some of the most peaceful days I’ve had in a while. I am so thrilled to be taking on this stunning country with Tiger, and so glad we made it here early enough to make the canoe trip happen. Thank you to the beautiful Whanganui and all of the people we’ve met and loved so far in this country. I have a feeling there will be many, many more.
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