Day 53 - going with the flow
John Coull Hut —-> Ngaporo Campsite 44km paddle
We launched our canoe this morning at a very leisurely 9am. Jon & Sara had left early doors as they’d decided to try to shorten the trip into three days rather than four. So it was just me & Steph and Ollie & Peter paddling together for the next few days.
The river was still brown and murky but the canyon it passed through was so beautiful, waterfalls pouring off the sides and the occasional mountain goat hopping around.
After a couple of hours paddling we spotted the sign for Manapura landing where we could walk to the (NZ) famous bridge to nowhere. Ollie and Peter pulled their canoe in with effortless ease but when Steph and I tried to do the same we slid right past and floated on down the river! We back paddled as much we could but the river was having none of it, it was taking all our effort just to stay stationary. We eventually managed to paddle to the side of the rock, where I got out and walked the canoe along a ledge until we were close enough to the landing site and could paddle in.
Socks and crocs on, we walked the 45 minutes up to the bridge to nowhere - originally built in 1936 for a settlement of WWI soldiers who were given land on the Whanganui, but all found the land too challenging to farm and had all left by 1942. No one had returned since and it’s now purely a tourist destination.
Bellies rumbling, we sped it back down to the canoe to find a whole lot more canoes now tied up, all coming to do the same as us. After some jiggery pockery we got our canoes free and floated along for 20 minutes or so before pulling up to a great little pebbly beach for lunch.
The only downside of the river being so high and flowing quickly was that the water level hid most of the rapids that normally live on the river. We had sections this afternoon where we’d go over the rapids but they were fairly tame in comparison to a lower flowing river.
The best of these rapids today came just before our camp for the evening at Ngaporo, so close in fact that we very almost missed it! This campsite was my favourite of the trail to date. Right on the river, with a waterfall across the canyon and a pebbly beach down below. The sun was beaming down and I could not have been happier to bask out in the sun for the final few hours of the day, before falling to sleep listening to the sounds of the river.
