Rafting | New Zealand
The relatively short New Zealand rivers and their high degree of incline in a dramatic mountainous terrain compellingly invite to adventurous ride on a raft. There are many localities on both NZ islands available for this purpose. On the North Island, the rivers around the Taupo Lake are popular; the South Island offers many rivers but only some of them are used on a regular commercial basis. We presume that you already have had some basic experience with rafting, and therefore we will gladly offer you rapids with difficulty level of 4 or 5 but for beginners there is always calmer water available. The ride, including the preparations, usually takes a half a day or a full day but rides with duration of several days are also no exception. There are delicacies available such as special events where a helicopter takes you high up to the mountains and you then ride the river through a wild mountainous landscape down to the river mouth at the sea.
Just like in some other areas of tourism, in this case, too, you can regrettably find tourist "factories", especially near tourist centres. Ask us and we will choose the most suitable locality for you.
And here is a description of what it can be like in the words of one of our clients who participated in a trip of this kind:
"In the evening, we came to the rafting base camp; after dinner, we watched some "ominous" motivation video on rafting and finally, before going to bed, we played a guitar. In the morning, we woke up to see a cloudy day; the weather seemed to be against us. Slowly, more adventurers similar to us started to arrive and we were waiting for the beginning. Before eleven o'clock, it all started. We were all welcomed by the organisers and then we were informed about what was awaiting us. We received a complete outfit – shoes, T-shirt, a neoprene suit, a life jacket and a helmet. We got on a bus and set off along a dusty road upstream. We reached the river and formed crews. Our guide tries to coordinate our responses to his commands. The training is nearing to its end; we have mastered the theory passably and hooray, we ride into a canyon from a wide valley. First we encounter small grade-three rapids; we try the commands in practice. For a little while, we stop at a bank and we receive some more instructions. And now we are in it; grade-four rapids… Wonderful, we are soaking wet and we don't care about anything at this point any more. We stop at a bank again and our guide explains to us how we should negotiate the next rapids, what we should do and he repeats once again how one can save oneself if one falls out of the raft. We embark on the beautiful blue water; we paddle on the left, backward, on the right, forward, we lie down on the bottom; suddenly the raft crumples, we are all under water and yet still on the raft; hooray – we have made it. We negotiated an indefinite number of more rapids; the most difficult ones were grade-five rapids and in the end we swim in ice-cold water. The canyon is spectacular; one does not know whether to watch the rapids or the surroundings and now we all flounder around in water; we try to swim to the opposite bank… We rest for a while and then we again board the rafts. We exit the canyon and the other bus – the "wet" bus – is already ready on the bank. We put the rafts on a trailer and we go back to the raft base camp. We take off the neoprene suits, take a hot shower and take dry clothes on and, being hungry, we rush to the barbecued food. While some reluctant talk could be heard in the morning before the action, the whole crew is now thrilled and they say they would take the ride again right now (on a 10-point scale for scoring activities, raft gets 11 points…). Eventually, we bought the souvenir CDs with our photographs (one cannot tell who is who under the water anyway) and we say goodbye; a long trip is ahead of us and the evening is drawing near… “
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