We spent the morning eating any and all of the food we had left. So for breakfast we had porridge, muesli and triple chocolate cookies.
Once our bags were packed, all we had to do was wait for the canoe company to arrive. We spent the next hour and a half in the cafe having tea and (more) homemade cookies and then had our canoeing 'induction' on the river before packing our bags into barrels and setting off at 11.30.
The part of the Whanganuii river we were canoeing can only be accessed by boat so there were no roads either side or houses to disrupt us and having left much later than everyone else, we were the only people on the river (me, luke, Renee and olli). We pulled the boats over onto a small pebble beach for lunch in the sun which was by far the most beautiful lunch spot we've had so far - views all the way down the river and the huge gorge-like cliffs either side covered in moss and fern trees with little waterfalls trickling down through the cracks.
We probably stopped for a good 45 minutes before getting back in the boats and paddling until 5pm.
My arms were aching by 3.30 so the last bit was hard anyway but when Luke tried steering us into a cave I almost had a breakdown and wondered whether the man called them 'divorce boats' for a reason! Despite not wanting to go IN, the cave was pretty cool - just a big crack between two cliff faces with a little waterfall right in the middle of it. I had a bit of a tantrum but got over it once I saw the sign for the campsite and apologised for being eggy.
We couldn't believe we'd got all the way to camp without any rain! When we were at Tongariro we were forecasted 10 days of rain and instead we had beautiful sunshine all day!
Not wanting to push our luck, we cooked straight away and opened a bottle of wine (the boys had beer). Considering we gave the man $40 (£20) and still wound up with 12 beers and three bottles of wine, it was a very nice wine! And paired perfectly with our mashed potatoes, peas and spam!
We sat around for a while chatting until the bottle was finished, and then jumped in our tents for a very good nights sleep just as the rain came in.
V. Good day!!
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