Day 48 Peel Forest/Rangitata River

---

[youtube=30Kv6_cx6d0]

Day 48 Peel Forest

Another fine day in paradise, a day white water rafting! We drive to Peel Forest to get to the Rangitata Rafting lodge by 10.30am. We arrived a bit early and we were invited in for a drink and told to chill out while we waited for the other people to arrive.

Once everyone had arrived at the lodge we were instructed on how to wear all our gear, wetsuits, life jackets etc. After everyone was dressed we all jumped onto a mini bus that took us to the top of the river. Our guide was called Vincent and we also had Ben in our raft who we think was helping Vincent out as he was quite new. There were 4 rafts in total with a mixture of nationalities although mainly British. In our raft we were joined by 1 Kiwi, 1 chap from Bermuda and a couple from Belgium.

When we were all ready we jumped into the raft and set off down the Rangitata River. Vincent told us the commands he would be using and instructed us of what we had to do to ensure that we safely made it down the river. Ben and Vincent, in fact all the guides had a great sense of humour kept us amused all day.

The river was cold and turquoise blue as it is fed by 2 glaciers. It was slow and gentle to start with so we got used to working as a team and riding in our raft. The first few rapids were grade 3 and we managed them well, they also made us crash into a big rock to test our skills. We then stopped and climbed up some rocks to look down at the next rapids we were to go down, these were grade 5.

Vincent was good at explaining what we had to do, we had to forward paddle hard into the rapids and then sit down in the raft to ride down. After an hour or so on the river we parked up and climbed up a rock so we could all jump off it into the river. We then continued down a set of 3 rapids before Vincent purposefully tipped our boat over and we floated with the current down the river until he came to collect us. We really enjoyed the rafting, it was sweet as (Kiwi for great) and we would like to do it again.

When arriving back at the lodge we get changed, sit in the sun and have a bbq. The weather today had been perfect, clear blue skies and sunshine. We set up camp for the night about 10km down the road on a government run camp site. We had the whole site to ourselves so chilled out and enjoyed the evening sunshine and the peacefulness.

---