Day 54 - lazy water days

Ngaporo Campsite —-> Downes Hut 48km paddle

After another fairly lazy start to the day we spent the morning gently paddling along and exploring the mini canyons and tributaries along the river.

By the afternoon, the river had started to widen and the land either side transformed into farmland.

As well as the usual stream of goats we saw wild pigs running about the river banks and hawks flying overhead; coming down to rest on the tree tops as we paddled by. There was a fair bit more effort required by now, the river flow had slowed since we started and we were all now feeling it in our arms - about time they got a work out for a change!

By 4pm Steph had spotted the sign for Downes hut and we pulled over to the river side to moor up. Unfortunately Ollie and Peter hadn’t seen it - they were 100m down the river on the wrong side… We yelled as hard as we could and somehow, after about 20 minutes of paddling up-stream, dragging their boat across a pebble bank and spinning around in an eddy, they also managed to moor up outside the hut!

The mooring spot for this hut wasn’t quite as close to the hut as we had been previous evenings, we had to lug our barrels along a slippery muddy path to the hut.

We dried our tents from the previous night in the last of the evening sun and settled into our final night on the river, drinking the last of our G&Ts and watching the sun go down behind the canyon.

Absolutely no night visits were made to the long drop at this hut as I’m 99.9% sure it was haunted.