Whanganui river - Day 4

Last night was an endless barrage of rain. As much as I love falling asleep to a brutal storm while safe in a warm shelter I could only think of the difficulties it will bring for tomorrow's paddle.

When I awoke It was extremely foggy, and I couldn't tell if the rain had passed. As we pulled ourselves together we realized that it was in fact a beautiful day with sun and cloud. We were on the river by 10, with a plan to stay overnight in Downes hut. We cruised downstream with there being quite a few rapids. One in particular took us for a ride, and we had to bail out some water that managed to crash in. We spotted a car, canoe and a dead cow that were taken in the recent flood. It was quite visable how high the water managed to get. There were landslides around every bend.

Our maps said their was a campsite just before Downes hut so we stopped up there to check it out. This may once have been a campsite, but was now a driftwood graveyard. We had trouble accepting that this was campable land at one point. Mikey had a ride on a broken down tractor and we continued forward to the hut.

As we paddled up to the hut we realized there was quite a few canoes parked up. We had caught up to the Christian school group. We said our hellos and then decided that neither of us were in any mood to be drinking whiskey in a small hut with 20 kids, so we found some flat land in the trees parallel. There was some bamboo tree there and we both took turns seeing who can climb the highest before setting up camp.

Mikey set up a beautiful tiki bar, and as we started making dinner I felt the familiar chill of rain. We packed up the gear and prepared for the showers.  We decided that this was our last night on the river and the whiskey needed to be finished. So in the light of sitting in the cold rain we drank. I had a good laugh after going to the extremely happy and cheerful hut to wash some dishes, and coming back to Mikey sitting in the rain shooting back whiskey.

The rain eventually did stop, and Mikey and I decided we would try and get a fire going to warm up. It took a solid effort, but we managed to start one. We dried out our gear and continued telling stories until late in the night. Mikey managed to light one of his socks on fire, but the only solution to that was to drink more.

The Whiskey was soon empty laying on the warm ground next to the lifeless fire. We slipped off into our tents, and I fell asleep to the sound of a snoring drunk canadian.