03.04.18 — Rafting the Wairoa River
Today’s adventure was a trip down the Wairoa river. The original plan was to go down a popular route which ends in a drop down the tallest commercially guided waterfall in the world. However, the water levels weren’t sufficient, so we were rerouted. Fortunately for us, our guide claims the Wairoa River is an even better experience with more rapids over a longer route. Normally a trickle, the river explodes into a whitewater playground once a week in the summer when a dam upstream is released, creating a long, meandering channel of churning rapids. Luckily for us, that day of the week is Sunday — today.
After cleaning up our lodging place at the morae and being wished farewell by our host with another ceremony, we drove from Waitomo to the Ruahihi hydropower station. There our rafting guides laid out our wet suits, helmets, life jackets, paddles and ground rules for the journey to come. Some of us had rafted before, a few hadn’t. We were going into some rapids that were rumored to be at least “class 4.” My impression of rafting guides is that they are a fairly sharp, agile bunch who take great delight in giving the impression that they just happened to stumble into their roles as river guides by accident on their way to the beach or the ski lift and decided to hang out for a while (and stop shaving). Actually, that is probably the truth. Note to self: explore the theme of “trust.”
We broke up into groups of four or five. My team’s guide had a ready sense of humor and was great at jumping in and out of the boat onto various cliff-faces (“grab onto this rope for a minute, mate!”) in order to spot how the rafts navigating the river ahead of us were faring. While other guides were demonstrating paddle strokes with their novice crews sitting in beached vessels on the river-bank, ours was impatient to get into the water so we could learn what to do the proper way — on our way down the river.
As a crew member on a raft, it was enlightening to learn that the chaos of the rapids is approached in a relatively logical, systematic manner — with a system of six paddle strokes combinations and three maneuvers within the boat. Follow orders and you’ll be fine. I have a hard time distinguishing voices from surrounding sounds and often find myself embarrassed by this invisible handicap, doing my best to piece together what is being communicated from context, or quacking “sorry, what??” I had the foresight to explain this to our guide, who confided that he can barely hear out of his right ear, but makes it work — I sat directly to his left where I could hear his instructions loud and clear and he could hear my enthusiastic wooping and yelling as we let loose into the maelstorm of water.
On trust: Guiding a raft is sort of like driving a car, but having to do so while half-blind, navigating the road by memory, and operating the whole machine second hand by issuing commands to a small handful of people, one of whom can reach the gas pedal, another the steering wheel, another the gear shift. It is truly a team exercise, and each person depends on the other to navigate the craft between innumerable and ever changing obstacles in the manner most conducive to staying alive. In the end, the raft guide is putting his life in our hands as much as we are putting ours in his.
We made our way down the river, our guide issuing commands, us doing our best to respond in kind — “Forward Paddle, Left Back, now Right Draw!” Occasionally we would get it wrong — our guide knew to tell us ahead of time when we weren’t allowed to. We learned how to distinguish between a “hold on,” “get down!,” and a “GET the FUCK down!” (imagine a Kiwi accent here). We followed these instructions as we careened through twists, turns, dips and drops with colloquial names (The Roller Coaster, Mother’s Worst Nightmare), often ones that called to mind a trip down the Sears appliance aisle (the Toaster, the Washing Machine, The Toilet Bowl…). We were encouraged to enjoy the approach (“Skol!”), take the rocks and rapids seriously and celebrate each successful passage through a challenging feature, usually with some good natured taunting of the next raft to follow us through.
Finally we made it through to the last calm, flat stretch of river and to one last small rapid. We leaned back and dropped into the water to ride through it on our backs, emerging from underneath to the sound of the busy waters receding behind us. Looking up, the banks of the river were lined with palms, ferns, birds jumping from tree to tree, an occasional sunbather laid out on a perch, high rock walls shining with water trickling down them or springing out from atop in long, narrow falls. Everything was alive and flourishing, nourished by the once-a-week free-flow of breathing, bubbling, tumbling green waters that transformed the quiet canyon into a living artery. Tomorrow it would revert to a placid stream.
Pulling our rafts out of the water we were contented, glad to have tackled this first real adventure of our trip, our bare skin freed from wet-suits and warming quickly in the sun. We would spend more time in Mt. Maunganui -a nearby coastal town — with free time to roam, eat and chill out in the shadow of the town’s eponymous volcanic cone. Then, we would end our day with a drive to Rotorua, our next destination. For the first time, the van got quiet as the students rested their eyes, preparing themselves for almost three more weeks worth of sights.
