Rafting the highest waterfall in the world! ? 

Tuesday 22nd January, 2019.

We got in late last night from the Maori Experience so we had a little lie in this morning which was needed. From there we did the usual van duties but this time the dump station in our holiday Park was an actual toilet in the floor. Weird!

First stop was some native Maori buildings in Rotoura centre itself. A small collection of buildings (unsure of their actual history) that were the typical decorative Maori style. These buildings were situated on geothermal land. Small boiling pools of water shot steam into the air and made weird hissing and cracking noises throughout the land.

Today’s main agenda was Rotoura Rafting. A rafting company situated on a ancient Maori river that had the highest commercially rafted waterfall…

…IN THE WORLD!

Sweet as ??

The lads at RR were awesome. Quality sense of humour, cared and wanted us to have an awesome time.

We rocked a 6 man boat and were quickly in the water learning how to raft and the safety we needed to full send down the 21ft waterfall.

A series of rapids and us getting absolutely soaked. I think Nat chose to sit at the front, not me…

…more fun anyway!

We had quite a few opportunities to jump off the side into deeper water, surf some rapids in the raft and obviously decent quickly down these fast flowing waters.

The big one. 21ft in height or 7M if you’re a New Zealander. Sitting at the front of the boat made it all the more real as we literally saw the drop as we dangled over the edge of the fall itself.

FRONT PADDLE, FRONT PADDLE, FRONT PADDLE, IN AND DOWN!

We clutched on to the ropes, I crossed my heart and my fingers that we would land this massive fall…

…we didn’t ?

A frightful 20 seconds underwater I popped up under the boat somehow, managed a breathe of air and went back under the boat and to safety, all whilst losing a contact lens in the process.

I am so glad we didn’t land as it was even more awesome getting thrown out the boat and getting pulled under by these incredibly strong waters. What a ride!

That was pretty much our day. The weather gave us the all clear for the Tongariro crossing that we missed on Monday so we headed back south to Mt Doom and set up camp ready for an early morning on the crossing.

The evening was spent curtain twitching in the van as seemingly a full car park still attracts (and parks) more vans and cars. Who knew?! ??‍♂️

8 hour hike tomorrow and a near on 2000m peak. Sweet as ??

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