When my brother emailed me the link to the Rafting NZ webpage, asking if I’d be happy for him to book the trip, I saw the words ‘extreme’ but figured that was just marketing, and didn’t read much further. So that is how I came to be booked to raft both the Kaituna River (with a 7 metre waterfall) and Wairoa river (with multiple grade 5 rapids) in the same day. Thanks big brother, I owe you one.
Our day started at 8:30 in the morning with coffee in hand, just outside of Rotorua. We layered up with fleece shirts, wetsuits, neoprene booties and a helmet and then piled into the van for a ride to the start of the Kaituna river. Before we started the 45 minute trip, our guides gave us some basic instructions and told us about the Maori history of the river and led us in a karakia.
Then our boats we’re off. Five minutes later at the first waterfall, we got our first chance to practice ‘get down, hold on’ – where you do just that and hope the boat lands upright with you in it on the other side of the waterfalls. The rest of the trip was smooth sailing, with opportunities to surf in the waterfalls and yup, drop down the giant 7 metre waterfall. It was a fun trip, beautiful scenery and pretty doable, even if you’ve got no river experience. It turned out to be a great warm-up to the second river of the day. More photos of the Kaituna river trip.
We then hopped in the car, grabbed lunch and headed up to McLaren Falls for the start of the rafting trip. The damming of the Wairoa river in the 1970s was opposed by local groups, who managed to reach a compromise allowing the river to flow at it’s full levels just 26 Sundays a year for recreational use. This river has multiple grade 3, 4 and 5 rapids (grade 6 is considered not raftable). More photos of the Wairoa trip.
We geared up and jumped in the boat, spending quite a bit more time training on the water this time with our guide and a total of 6 passenger/paddlers. We learned to coordinate our strokes and turn the boat. We then all had to jump out and take turns rescuing or pulling each other in. Then we were ready for our first rapid as warm-up. Once again we practiced the ‘get down-hold on’ followed by get up and paddle approach. After successfully getting through ‘humpty dumpty’ (the first rapid), we then practiced flipping the boat, falling out and bringing the boat back upright, and finished by trying to get ourselves back in. I should have guessed that the extensive practice was for a reason.
We trucked on through the next rapids, without a hitch. Before each rapid, our guide would explain what to expect, how we would maneuver and what to be careful of. Finally we approached the most ominous grade 5 rapid, where several people have died. We were warned in detail about this rapid, which is problematic at the end, when the current will pull any swimmers into an underwater cave. There is a last chance rope there. But we were told, if you fall out on this rapid, let go of the boat (it’s too difficult and dangerous to pull you back in to the boat in the middle of this rapid) and when you get to the end, swim as hard as you can to the right, out of the current and hope you miss that underwater cave.
As we approached this rapid, we turned sideways and paused in front of a giant boulder, allowing the guide to prepare, line up the boat and check the water flows. We could not see the rapid, then ‘we got down, held on’ and the real adventure began. I was at the back of the boat, which apparently is notorious for bucking off paddlers. As we dropped down the waterfall, I heard the command to get up and paddle – I possibly was a bit too keen to get underway.
I got up and never sat back down, as the back of the boat popped up and I fell out backwards. There was a brief bit of calm in the storm that allowed me to swim to the boat, put my paddle in and hold on to the rope. I tried to pull myself back in, but there was no hope. I knew I was supposed to let go and let the river take me, but I looked up and saw the long line of massive rapids ahead and could not for the life of me will my hands to let go. Another paddler at the back looked me, he knew he wasn’t supposed to rescue me, but surely he saw the fear in my eyes and my desire to get BACK IN THAT BOAT. He tried to pull me in, but on his second attempt, the back of the boat bucked up again as we rafted over another falls, my would-be rescuer came right over the top of me and knocked a third paddler off the boat. Possibly the best photo in the series, is the boat now half empty of paddlers and one hand reaching up out of the water.
We were now in the thick of the rapids. What was surely more than a hundred metres long of rapids, passed by in seconds. Part of the reason you can let go of the boat and swim through the rapid here is that the water is moving so fast and so forcefully, there are few if any opportunities for your body to get trapped underwater. You don’t have to do anything, but wait for the water to spit you out the other side.
All the same, if you’ve never experienced how powerful water is, it is a strange thing to have no control over where your body goes and to have no sense of which way is up or down. To me, only a few seconds passed by, for which I can’t describe or remember anything. As soon as I felt the rapids fall away and the speed of the current slow down, I started swimming in the opposite direction the current was moving. I didn’t wait for my head to come out of the water, or determine which way was river right. It was only a few seconds, and I was out of the current, in a nice eddy safely holding on to the rockface and looking back.
Apparently, I swum faster that day than anyone ever had to get out of the current. My fellow swimmers, were a bit more dazed by the tumble and struggled to recognise where they were or remember the instruction to swim. Fortunately, all three of us missed the underwater cave and were easily picked up by the boat. It was an adrenalin charging experience and it took some time for me to settle back on to the boat. We paddled through the remaining rapids with no more wild adventures.
It was an awesome trip and one I would recommend, but don’t forget to ‘get down and HOLD On!’