Rig Jockey Highway Slammer

We got to ride in a transport truck. It was awesome.

We left Windy Welly on the train and took it a little while out of the city to a place where we could start hitching. Our first ride could only bring us ten minutes further down the road but he had done the Whanganui River paddle before and said it was one of the best things he had ever done.

Our next ride was in a transport truck. The truck pulled over, we climbed in with Mark in the passenger seat and I was sitting on the drivers overnight bag in between. It gave me a great view of the road and what the driver was doing as well as a fantastic opportunity to consider various massage and chiropractor options for the end of the road. He was a former farmer turned trucker and that was about the extent of what we could understand with his accent. He seemed to enjoy the company and I found if I smiled, said "oh wow" and every so often mentioned how impressive driving such a huge truck on small windy roads was it kept him fairly happy. Two more rides got us to Wanganui, the first being a guy who works at a caving adventure place in Waitomo and recommended a couple places for us and the second being a professional cricket player named Tim. Tim was a guy slightly older then us, had driven past us but pulled over up ahead, turned around and came back to get us. He just got back from a month long tournament in South Africa playing some of the best cricket sides in the world.

We camped out behind the hostel we had stayed at previously in Wanganui and got up early today to hitch to Ohakune. We got a ride with a photocopier repairman who took us all the way to Ohakune, which is just on the other side of the mountain we climbed on teh Tongariro Northern Circuit.

We are all set up for our paddle beginning tomorrow. It was fairly expensive to rent the canoe, barrels, jackets, paddles and gear plus get our DOC pass (tomorrow is the official start of the great walks season) so we opted for the cheap campsite option. We are paying $4 to stay the night at a DOC campsite but its a few clicks out of town so its about a 45 minute walk from the outfitters, closer to an hour from the center of town. We have to be at the outfitters by 7 at the latest tomorrow so between packing, slow morning moving and weather time we'll be getting up before 6.

We have all the stuff we need for the paddle, the outfitters given us a detailed map of the river including information about all the rapids, islands and campsites we'll need to know. Some of the campsites apparently have great day walks from them including some natural hot spring pools that we can go in. It's supposed to rain until about lunch time tomorrow and then be sunny days for the next week.

The paddle should take us the next four nights so we will probably be back out into civilization by October 5. It looks as though we could do the paddle faster but I think we're hoping to take our time and explore the side trails and some of the streams that can lead you towards some nice waterfalls (the botoom of the gentle falls, not the top of a big one).

We're both really excited about the paddle, we've been trying to get to this for a few weeks now and even though its costing more then we hoped we figured this is one of the ones thats worth it.

The plan after the paddle is to either hitch out to the west coast to do another mountain walk or up to Taupo to do our skydive. It'll all depend on weather and rides I suppose.