A Dangerous Business

Date: 20th December 2023

Start: Mangawaiiti Campsite (river km 47.5)

End: Ngaporo Campsite (km 1274.8)

Distance Travelled: 32.8 km paddled + 5.4 km walked (38.2 km total)

Total Distance Completed: 1227.9 km

Song Currently Stuck in Head: I Wonder (Depature) by ABBA

Desire for a Cushion: at an all time high

My arms were still sore when I woke up today and my cough was still, well, coughing. Worst of all, I now had to repack all my barrels and take them back down that infernal hill. Not before I’d had my morning coffee, obviously. All the barrels were packed by 8am but it took another 45 minutes to get them into the canoes, then tie them up and launch onto the river.

A series of rapids greeted us right after camp, Nil and I navigating through them easily. The earlier start and tall hills around us provided a nice bit of shade that was dearly missing from yesterday’s trip. All in all, I definitely felt more positive today than I did yesterday. Nil made for a good helmsman, always finding the best path through each rapid.

Our first stop today was at Mangapurua landing, although calling it a landing is a stretch.

We were here to do a bit of, *checks notes*, walking? I was told I’d get 5 days without any walking. To be fair, we’d only be walking a bit over 5 km and there wouldn’t be any packs involved. Walking to where? Well, we were walking to nowhere (sorry for being so cringe).

After WW1, the New Zealand government allocated plots of land in the valleys around the Whanganui River to returning veterans and their families. To say it was a harsh environment was an understatement. The terrain didn’t make for good settling, and accessing it and getting supplies to the valleys was incredibly time consuming. To make life easier, a plan was made to create a road between National Park and Taranaki to connect these communities to the outside world. Part of this project was the construction of a tall reinforced concrete arch bridge over the Mangapurua Stream. Prior to this, the settlers had to contend with a flimsy suspension bridge, a wire cage, or simply scrambling down and up the sides of the stream. By the time it was completed it had already become apparent that maintaining these communities was a losing affair and by 1943 they had all been abandoned, leaving a bridge that went nowhere.

The walk to the bridge was easy, and seeing it appear out of nowhere (pun unintended) was surreal. It’s the kind of bridge I’d expect to see on a semi-busy rural road, out here – even when it was inhabited – it feels severely overengineered for the purpose it was designed to serve.

Once we cast off for the landing, I was expecting to paddle for another hour before we took our lunch break. We went 300 m, found a nice beach by some rapids, pulled over (except Sonja and Maud who made a real hash of parking their canoe, went down the rapid backwards and pulled up on the far side of the beach), and ate lunch.

As you can see, we had zero shade and the sun was really making its presence known, so it wasn’t the most comfortable of breaks. Granted I still found it more comfortable than my canoe seat. Turns out sitting on hard plastic for 8+ hours everyday isn’t the nicest feeling in the world. Trouble is, I need to sit on that seat if I want to reach tonight’s camp. So I did, setting off southwards down the river once more.

Despite the dominating cliffs and mountains above us, the journey was getting slightly monotonous. We were well used to the rapids by this point and didn’t provide much excitement anymore. All we could do is keep paddling, hoping that the canoes in front of Nil and I would pull over for a break at some point. Just past Tieke Kainga they did. The journey afterwards was more memorable, for reasons both pleasant and not.

Soon after leaving I began feeling some pain in my stomach which then turned into mild nausea. I was notably concerned as I didn’t have a clue what was causing it. Some bad food? A other symptom of the cold I seemed to have picked up that now means I’m coughing non-stop yet again? Motion sickness caused by the choppy conditions from jet boat wakes? I couldn’t be sure, what I did know is that I really didn’t want to paddle, forcing Nil to push the canoe and my sorry body downstream. Thankfully the feeling didn’t last too long. Ahead of us a bunch of other canoes had stopped (as much as you can stop on a river) and formed a raft, a raft that we joined upon reaching them. For the next hour we floated slowly down the river, chatting and laughing away, all the while I started feeling better and better.

With 1 km to go we disbanded and dashed to camp, passing through one of the strongest rapids so far. They were getting to be quite fun by this point and we were in no danger of capsizing. Much to our collective delight, this camp didn’t have the same rock scramble and steep climb we had yesterday. Just a rocky beach and shirt climb to contend with.

By the time dinner rolled around, I crashed. I had zero energy left, no interest in staying up any later than I had to. My head was still bobbing around from the day’s voyage which was more annoying than anything. By 8pm I’d had enough, brushed my teeth and got into my tent. Tomorrow was going to be a long day and if it was anything like today’s I’d need all the strength I could muster.