The 14 of us who met along the Te Araroa Trail completed this six-day, five-night canoeing journey together.
This is one of New Zealand’s nine Great Walks – the Whanganui River, the only one that’s paddled rather than walked. The TA route covers part of it, but we decided to do the entire route, paddling all the way from Taumarunui to Whanganui town—227 kilometres in total.
Very different from our usual days hiking with backpacks, we traded our feet for our arms to paddle. We learned to navigate rapids by reading where the currents converged, paddled hard to avoid capsizing, and then lashed all the boats together, lay back, soaked up the sun, and let the river drift us along.
After the forests, we learned to live with water.
What made it even better was ditching the backpacks—we packed luxuries like fresh fruit, food, snacks, and beer. Thanks to the river carrying the load, we threw ourselves a proper river party!
(Revisiting: 31 January 2017)
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