Day 1

Cherry Grove to Ohinepane.

5:30am wake up!

Steve had to meet Phil at Canoe Safaris in Ohakune by 7:15am and we still had stuff to unload and reload for the car and trailer to be left with them. Once Steve was off, Rochelle got to go back to "bed" (if you can call sleeping on a camping mat "bed"). Steve was dropped back to Cherry Grove by 9am and we had to get up and start the day for real. We sorted and packed our barrels, last minute items where bought in town and our final meal was eaten (lunch from a bakery for the boys and coffee for Steve and Rochelle). The time had come to hit the river. Some locals saw us struggling with all of our equipment as we carried it from the camp site to the boat ramp and let us load up their ute for the short journey. William and James were given some quick instructions for their first day canoeing together and we were off!

This section of river was a tough introduction to the journey. It was late in the day, the water level was lower than usual and there were lots of rocks to avoid and a nasty head wind to battle against. After about an hour of paddling, things were looking pretty good, when William and James misread a rapid and tipped out. This may have caused other families to get down but not the Kiesanowskis, you could hear the laughter (especially from Alex!) as we watched James and William plop into the river and then bob along into an eddy for bailing out. Thankfully nothing was really lost except some time. We had lots of layers to put on and had some food to warm us up and get us going again. James and Steve swapped canoes to see if we could get some more river covered and we were off. There were some tough times to come over the next three hours. James and Rochelle battled with steering their boats against the head wind, expressing themselves with some choice words of frustration! Rochelle admits to having some serious doubts about her interest in doing nine more days of this! But, of course, we were resilient and made it to Ohinepane; frozen from the waist down and looking forward to some serious kai. You can't go wrong with spaghetti bolognese followed by a sleep in a warm, dry tent at the end of a hard day.