Wellington-Wanganui 19-22nd February

After meeting Neil and Nina in Wellington we made plans to head north and start the canoeing, we left the next day and booked the trip before bedding down in a tent for the night.

We woke up in a soaked tent at 6am thinking with the torrential rain the trip would be off but before we knew it we were being cast off into the river, the drop off guy had just enough time to shout 'Get out of the river if any big logs float past!'.

The rain was so hard we could hardly see and Neil and Alex spent more time bailing water out of the canoes than paddling. The upside was the waterfalls were spectacular! Despite the conditions (and the flooding river) we made our first overnight stopping point, 37km away from where we had been dropped off.

The weather cleared up for the next two days but the river was still in flood (that's why it looks brown in all the photos). After two and a half days of paddling and sleeping in huts be the riverside we finished. We had travelled 90km! Feeling pretty celebratory we awarded ourselves with a burger and pint of beer at Taupo in the evening and started mustering some courage to get thrown out of a plane at 15000ft the next day!

Lots of love

Alex and Sophie xxx