Rohan's Rangatiki Ramble

Having recently spent ten days in the South Island practicing my kayaking skills, and roving up to Tauranga and Rotorua to spend a weekend with the infamous Hutt Valley boys, I was feeling keen and confident to attempt the mighty upper Rangatikei.

Due to various social occasions that had to be attended on Saturday night, we did not leave until 7:00am on Sunday morning. Paul, Bill and myself were in one car. We spent most of the trip discussing various philosophical standpoints on interpersonal attraction, with Paul suggesting intermittently than I may like to discuss the river. Nic, Jo and Mark were in the other car. I have no idea what they talked about.

The Rangatikei is fairly typical of North Island rivers. It has too many rocks and not a lot of water. The level that day was ``one metre, ... no, ... two meters, ... um, not less than a metre.''

Our first stop on the way down was the play hole ``Pop Up''. Everyone had a play here, but at the risk of offending others, Bill looked like the only one who was surfing the hole rather than being surfed by it. Personally, I received a reasonable beating there, rolling up a couple of times, finding with dismay that I was still in the guts of it.

But now to the fun stuff. Jo was paddling a demo boat -- a Cosmic Feelfree. On the first of what were described to me as the ``hard rapids'' (Max's Drop) he had a swim. It took about five minutes to recover his boat and another five to beat out the dent that it had incurred.

The next swim of the day belonged to Nic. I forget the name of the rapid, and I didn't see the event, but noticed there was a problem when a submerged boat floated down around the corner. I'm told in the greatest confidence that swimming has become very fashionable.

The rest of the trip was reasonably uneventful. Lots of rapids with names (``Fulcrum'', ``See Through'', ``Picket Fences'', etc).

At one point I commented to Bill that he seemed to be emptying his boat quite a bit. After some consideration we decided that the problem was probably the big hole in the bottom of it. A three month old kayak should not do this, but Bill took it in his usual manner, seemingly completely unaffected by it, just paddling off a little faster than before...

Everyone finished somewhat jaded, so we made a quick exit at the get out and sped home.

Rohan.



Last update: Thu Sep 26 12:32:43 NZST 1996

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