River Valley

Day 1: Mangee - COME BACK!!!!

Bex was half an hour late picking us up the following morning and we took a dislike to her pretty much as soon as she started talking. There was no apology for being late. Instead, we were all spoken to like we were about 5 years old as she dictated how she wanted certain accommodation and activities sheets to be filled out, threatening to keep us locked on the bus if they weren't done correctly. When we reached our first break stop of the day, she then refused to allow people access to their bags, despite how cold it was. Seriously, it was really bad and prompted several of us to consider getting off the bus and filing a complaint about her. The difference between her and my other guides was night and day.

We didn't have too many days to kill though, which meant sticking with her for a couple of days at least. To make matters worse, this bus also had some really annoying, immature characters on it, which probably influenced the child-like treatment we had been subjected to that morning. It can only get better we thought.

Thankfully, it did as she chilled out slightly and just made do with annoying the hell out of us rather than treating us like kids (can you tell I didn't like her?). On our way towards River Valley, we made another stop, where we all enjoyed a nice, scenic walk, which was quite welcome. This took us just over an hour and included a nice waterfall and views of the surrounding mountains and volcanoes.

We arrived at River Valley early evening and checked into their cozy lodge accommodation. We then all put our names down for some White Water Rafting the following morning. I've done this a couple of times earlier in the trip and have mentioned that I'm still looking for one that's not so tame. River Valley is supposedly the place to do it in New Zealand though so fingers crossed.

A pretty chilled evening - no beers this time. I mostly sat around with Mark, Ross, James, Callum and Harriet (England) and we played some cards.     Day 2: Up bright and early the following morning to face the cold weather (and it was really cold) and all get suited up for our Rafting trip. I was beginning to regret wishing for an extreme trip because I could only imagine how cold the water would be if we ended up in it. They gave us plenty of layers in preparation. We were all looking forward to it. I was in a boat with Callum, James, Mark and an English girl called Kate, who they had been travelling with. Our boat guide was a guy called Derek - a French-Canadian dude who warned us that he would be going pretty hard on us until we were all doing it right and in sync. He wasn't lying! For the first 10 minutes, we couldn't seem to get anything right (mostly Kate, Callum and James it has to be said) and Derek made us keep repeating things so we could show we could do what he asked. The river looked pretty extreme so it was important we got things right before it got too extreme. This included us all throwing ourselves out of the boat to be rescued by those left on it. Really fun but my god it was cold. Safe to say we would be trying our best to make sure that only happened in practice. Eventually, Derek was happy with us in time for us to hit the hardcore sections of the river. It was fantastic and exactly the kind of Rafting I was hoping for. Level 4-5 rapids all the way down, which saw us navigating some pretty big drops and trying to avoid lots of rocks. The intense training he had put us through definately paid off though as we were all working in sync and managing to get our way down the river pretty well. The same couldn't be said for some of the other groups, who even had a few who fell in. It was pretty unforgiving if we weren't doing it right and hard work too. Awesome. After a couple of hours Rafting, we made a brief stop to take on a big jump into the water off a side ledge. Freezing once again but Derek got us paddling pretty hard to get ourselves warmed up again. And then, right near the end, he stitched us up by giving a command that made the boat completely flip over and send us all (including him) tumbling into the water once more. We had ended up stuck against this rock when he told one side to all pile over to the other. Given how he had been at the start, we were loathe to argue even though it was pretty obvious what was going to happen. Such a laugh though as we all fell in - exactly what I'd been hoping for. A quality morning of freezing cold fun. We finished up early afternoon and boarded the bus with Bex having had a great time at our short stop at River Valley. If you're ever in New Zealand looking for somewhere to go White Water Rafting, this is the place to do it. Back to Wellington for us. A couple of nights there before returning to the south island.