White Water Rafting down the Buller Gorge River!

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We are writing this in Nelson, having arrived a few days early, due to heli hike cancellation. That is the beauty of doing a trip by campervan, you can change your plans at the last minute.

Murchison was not on our list of places to visit, but a chance meeting with a cool weegie backpacker who had tramped all over NZ for the past 15 years sent us in this direction. We arrived here at arround 11pm last night so could not tell what it was like until this morning.

Murchison is one of the best places in NZ to white water raft and having not ticked that off our list yet, this was why we headed here. We trusted the weegie as the lonely planet also backed this up.

In the morning we headed to NZ's longest swing bridge and then did the reurn trip (110 metres ) by flying fox. We then headed back over the bridge and tramped through some native bushland to kill some time before our rafting trip.

Our guides were pretty cool, and the only paddlers were me and G and and an Israeli guy just fresh out of his national service. I wish i got a piccie of our river guides as one looked like the guy who thinks he is- a pirate in the film "Dodgeball".

We rafted down the Buller River for about three hours, tackling 4 major rapids and lots of wee ones. We only tipped the raft once, and also narrowly avoided going into a grade 6 rapid with a "grade 7 consequence"!!

***piccies to follow***

During the trip there were plenty of chances to try wee tricks like "the helicopter" where the raft is nearly vertical and jump in and float down the river on your bum. There was also a chance to do a cliff jump and the menfolk stood back and let me go first, a result of which I have got a big bubble of pressure in my left ear and now a wee bit hard of hearing until it clears!!

So we are in Nelson tonight, I drove today and killed another bird on the way 😞( It flew into our windscreen, and was not a pretty sight!!

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