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Published: September 14th 2012
Right, so we arrive at our River Valley lodge. What an amazing place. It feels like a ski chalet in the alps. Beautiful wooden building with an open fire in the middle of the chillout room set right in a valley on the river, as the name suggests. The room options were either standard bunk bed dorm rooms or one big room which sleeps 16 on a row of connected bunks. I think 11 of us opted for the big room.
Unfortunately there had been alot of rain so the rafting was cancelled and we were told there was a chance we could go in the morning. So we decided to go for a walk across the river and up a steep hill. There was no bridge across the river so in order to cross we had to get hop onto a little wooden 'thing' attached to a zipline and pull ourselves across 2 at a time using a pulley system. This kept us amuzed for a while helping others across and pissing around trying to launch this thing to the other side without having to use the ropes.
That evening we had a few drinks in the lodge
and played a stupid game where you have to climb over a big table, underneath it and get yourslf back onto the top of it without touching the floor to win yourself a free drink. I had a few attempts but couldn't do it, arms not long enough. Brilliant fun though.
We woke bright an early the next morning as instructed to go rafting down the grade 5 river. We all got oursleves ready and had breakfast only to be told at the last minute that the river had risen again overnight and it was far too dangerous to go out there. Great, they could've told us earlier. Not a happy group of travellers.
We departed from River Valley and headed to Wellington, the Captial of New Zealand. On the way we stopped off at a town called Bull. All the buildings and shops had comical names here. Eg. The police station was named Const-a-bull, the library Read-a-bull and the toilets Relieve-a-bull.
After arriving in Wellington we had a walk around the city and checked out a Japanese show where we watched demonstrations of martial arts and oragami. Bit boring but there wasn't much else to do in
the pissing down rain. That evening a load of us went for a nice meal at an Indian restaurant and headed to a bar for some drinks.
The next morning we hopped onto a ferry for a 3 hour journey to the south island. Wicked. This is what I've been waiting for. The south island is twice as beautiful as the north. As we sailed closer to the south island I could see the snow capped mountains and the sun was back out. Wow. This is awesome. Checking out the weather reports reveals that there has been dumps of snow in Wanaka and Queenstown. Perfect. 4 of us are going to go snowboarding when we get there and I can't bloody wait. Fuck yeah!
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Brian Megaw
non-member comment
River Valley
Hi Dan Thanks for the post about River Valley. I'm sorry that the trip was cancelled after you got yourself up and ready. Sometimes we simply have to monitor the rate of drop in river level for a while before we can make a decision. I imagine this was one of those times. All the best for your trip in New Zealand. Brian Megaw