Te Araroa Day 44, Matahiwi to Hipango Park

Starting km: 1336?
Finishing km: 1373?
km covered today: 42

Our final full day of paddling was probably the least fun of the lot. The biggest rapids were behind us, the river began to show signs of being polluted with agricultural runoff and although the previous afternoons had been hot, this one was an absolute scorcher.

To top it off, the last hour or so of paddling was very challenging, seemingly requiring huge effort to get not much of anywhere.

So it was with some relief that we spotted a wooden boat dock around 14:00 and confirmed with some folks untying their motor boat that yes, this was Hipango Park, our planned camp for the evening.

Since we'd left around 06:30 in an (only slightly successful) attempt to avoid paddling in the hottest part of the day we had all afternoon to spend at the campsite.  During this time, it became evident why the last bit of paddling had been so tough. The effect of the tide on the river, which we'd been told began about 20km from the Whanganui town, was clearly in full effect here, 26km away.

The first indication of this was when I popped back down to check on our canoes some 20 minutes after unloading them (and hauling all pur gear up a pretty decent hill). I found a paddle we'd left sitting on the lowest step of the  stepped dock structure floating in the river and the step itself under water.

A more dramatic illustration came later in the afternoon when I went down to the river again and found that one of our canoes had floated over top of one of the dock steps, had the tide go out beneath it and was now sitting high and dry over a metre above water.

We'd planned to set out the next day with high tide so that we could ride it out to the city of Whanganui near the river's mouth. Unfortunately high tides were at 01:00 and 14:00 that day, so we were looking at a morning of sitting around followed by a paddle in the hottest (and windiest) part of the day.

While sitting around in the afternoon it occurred to me that if we wanted to avoid fighting the tide we didn't actually have to leave at high tide. We just had to arrive before low tide. The paddle to town should take about three hours and low tide would be just after 07:30, so if we got up really early we could probably manage to...

I wasn't surprised that Paul went for this (he'd normally wake up at or before 05:00, then sit around looking anxious while waiting for the rest of us) but was somewhat surprise that the two ladies went for it without having to think twice.

So it was that we had a very early dinner, attempting to consume any food we didn't want to carry on our backs the following day after leaving the canoes behind.  We also cracked open the two bottles of wine I'd brought, but given the start time we had planned, everyone took it pretty easy on them and they didn't even get finished!

Before (19:30 under a sky that had almost 90 minutes of daylight left in it) bedtime we packed up the canoes and tied down all of the waterproof barrels leaving only our tents and sleeping bags to be stowed the following morning.