Into the fray....

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"Into the fray"

After Jordie's rather alarming words we had further anxious deliberations. There would be no one else on the very isolated river for three days at least and there was no road access for 5 days. We did have a satellite phone to summon a helicopter if we needed it but the thought of flipping the raft and losing contact with each other was a bit alarming. It occurred to me later that in all our joint 188 years we had never been as far away from another soul as we were on the 5 day journey. We had 2 barrels of food and 2 dry bags containing our clothes, tents and sleeping bags. We had a tool box, a pump and a satellite phone. And a shovel. For digging a toilet or possibly to bury the evidence of our trip.

We decided to get started first and choose our first night's destination depending on progress. The river level was high for the late summer and the water was brown due to recent rain. It was reassuring that the level had dropped slightly overnight but the river was still running at about 7km per hour. Felt more like 50 in the rapids! We were able to follow our progress and establish our location using a useful NZ GPS mapping app that didn't need internet access.

Jordie had put the fear of God into us by marking several difficult rapids on our map. The first one , "The Chute", was only a couple of hours after our start and we were anxious to know when we would reach it. But the rapids were frequent and recourse to the phone was tricky in the spray. We approached a gorge and careered down the biggest rapid so far, grounding on a large rock. The current tipped the boat upstream and for a moment it felt we would capsize, but James's quick instruction to lean left saved the day. We were still stuck on the rock, with us all on one side of the raft and had to do quite a lot of bouncing to get off the rock. The raft was surprisingly resilient in the face of numerous bumps and scrapes down the river. It was only after we'd had the close call that we were able to check our location and learn that we'd managed to bounce down "The Chute" in an inelegant but successful way. The white water was relentless, with rapids generally every 200m or so for the whole 5 days. The river bowled us on to our first hut at 40km, surprisingly effortlessly.

It was always a worry that we'd miss a hut or campsite, as there was no going back upstream if we did. Checking our position got increasingly frequent as we neared our target hut.

We spotted Forbes hut from afar, but were disappointed to note two quad vehicles there; we had hoped to have it all to ourselves as we hadn't seen a soul all day and land access to the hut involved days of ATV travel. The hut residents made us very welcome however, greeting us warmly from the bank and loading up the raft on top of a quad to get it clear of the water and a fierce wind which was brewing up.

The group of 5 were on a lads and dads boys hunting trip. Mark was the keen chef who stretched the portions to feed us all. The concept was to spend quality time with the family to help one young man find his way in life again. They were out for 2 weeks and relying on hunting for rations. Hunting is seen as essential pest management in NZ and is a major leisure activity. There were no mammals in New Zealand until the Europeans arrived and many flightless and ground nesting birds are seriously threatened by possums and stoats eating their eggs. Wild wallabies, goats and pigs are common and considered fair game to assist the survival of the indigenous flora and fauna.

The hut was festooned with kit as the group were not expecting us any more than we were expecting them! A couple of hunting rifles nestled between the mattresses. The kitchen boasted a huge range of sauces herbs and condiments. The stove was cranked up and we took the top sleeping deck which was a bit too hot most of the night.

The hunting crew were equally helpful getting us back on the water next day; it had been a proper NZ experience but it was nice to be just us, back on the water in the middle of nowhere.

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