Te Araroa Day 43, Ramanui to Matahiwi

Starting km: 1298?
Finishing km: 1336
km covered today: 42

Just about everything good about the previous day's paddling continued on this one: beautiful gorge; pleasant and peaceful (if muddy brown) river; cool, mossy cliff walls rising out of the water; and fun and exciting rapids.

This day had the biggest rapids of the whole trip. And just about any time we'd come to one I (as steerer of the canoe, would size up the rapid,  look for the simplest, easiest way through, then ignore the above and steer Yvonne and I in whichever direction looked most fun.

The very biggest rapid of all was shortly before the halfway point of the day. The local canoe and jetboat operators call it "the 50/50" because only about half those going through it in a canoe avoid going for an unplanned swim in the process.

As we approached I got us lined up perfectly to go straight down the middle of the rapid. Near the end we hit the largest wave nose first and filled about half of the canoe with water. But we made it through still afloat. We pulled out to the calmer side of the river and watched Paul and Leigh shoot through with no problems.  After they'd gone we dragged the canoe up the shallow rocky bank and went through again, not quite as elegantly as the previous go, but with less water in the canoe at the end.

Soon after this we arrived at the Pipiriki dock, where just about all non-Te Araroa canoeists leave the river.

The area downstream of this was wider than the gorge, and mostly pasture land, but to our pleasant surprise, still had plenty of rapids for fun and to speed our way down the river.

Towards the end of the day as we were looking for a place to camp we pulled out of the river at Matahiwi Landing. There was a lovely camping spot on the bank with a stream nearby, but Paul decided to head up the hill and check out Matahiwi Village. The one person who seemed to be home told Paul that it would be fine to camp out back of the community hall and use the kitchen inside and the adjacent toilets and showers.

The other three of us all camped down by the river, but headed up to have dinner with Paul before returning to our tents to be lulled to sleep by the white noise of the adjacent rapid.