(written on January 19th and 27th from notes taken previously)
Quite the full day today!
I didn’t get a lot of sleep, but I spent a lovely morning on the banks and I’m the water of the crystal-clear, fast-moving Waikato River.
Despite being quite crowded this time of year and in the morning, because as easily one of my favorite rivers in the entire world that I’ve been to, perhaps even my tippy (I should clarify that I’m referring to the part of the river in the first however many kilometers after it leaves Lake Taupo. It’s a very long river that winds its way up toward Auckland and then off to the west into the ocean, and by that point, it has gathered up so much dirt and sediment that it’s definitely not my favorite river 🙃).
Ate some yogurt for breakfast and chatted with Pierre, a French national on vacation in New Zealand from serving as sort of France’s version of the Coast Guard on one of the French-governed territorial islands in the Pacific.
We chatted for a good bit about his life and adventures and family (he was with his wife and I think it was two? kids).
For a good little while as we talked, I just watched other travelers jumping in and swimming before I finally dove in myself.
It’s a pretty wide river at that particular point: I would guess at least a couple of hundred feet wide, and it’s so swift that you can’t really swim out much from the bank without getting taken down river a good ways very quickly.
One of the reasons the water is so crystal clear as it leaves Lake Taupo is that the large, deep lake acts as a natural filter, so in addition to the novelty of the floating rocks when out in deep water, you get this pristine water with a bit of a bluish tint to it.
I wanted to swim to the other side, but not too far downriver from that lovely spot is a section where the river narrows significantly until it’s only maybe 10 m wide? and the entire massive volume of water squeezes into that spot and rushes and churns violently over what I expect are large subsurface boulders before it tumbles to an enormous collection pool at a rate of 58,000 gallons per second–able to fill five Olympic swimming pools per minute.
😶
It’s one of the largest volume waterfalls in the world but only drops 11 meters from the top of the water to the catchment below at the final drop.
After chatting with Pierre for a good little while, eventually, it was time for me to jump in. 🙃
Which I did, diving at first. The current is so strong. You can’t just casually swim. You either have to swim as hard as you can to basically stay in the same place, or you jump in at one spot and get out further down.
Or you can do what I did and hold onto the rocks below in one spot, swim quickly over to the bank, and then climb along the bank until you can get up.
Which is what I did. 🙃
I’m a tad sad the tree we jumped out of last time has been cut down. 😞
After my first dip, I climbed along the riverbank maybe one or 200 m from where I was parked, following the general path I saw a couple other people take earlier who then swam out and swam down back towards the parking area.
Such a beautiful river. 😊
After going up once, I decided that I wanted to try and swim all the way across the river. 🙃
So I grabbed my snorkel, because it’s a heck of a lot easier for me to go swimming when I have a snorkel then otherwise. I can stay in the water for hours with a snorkel without getting too tired, but if I have to actually swim swim, then I’ll be tired quite quickly.
Once again, I made my way up the side of the river quite a ways before attempting my swim across. In fact, I got to a point where the water was moving slowly and lasted I could actually snorkel up the river on that side.
Eventually, I made the determination to go ahead and swim across, and it was a lovely little swim. I wouldn’t be surprised if the river is 10 or 20 m deep in some of the spots that I swam over. The bottom was so far down.
Depth can be so hard to figure with just a visual.
Pierre grabbed his kayak and followed me up the river and across, the water much more still at the really deep spot.
It was a great snorkel. I think I maybe saw one fish. 😆
I wonder if fish can even make it up that powerful of falls? 🤷
Pierre and I had talked about my needing to leave the country next month, and he suggested maybe going to New Caledonia where he was stationed. The island sounded absolutely beautiful, but I want to go to a country I haven’t been to yet. 🙃
I bid farewell to Pierre and family and then headed down river to revisit Huka Falls, taking a few pictures, running into Pierre and company again (we’re taking the same route today for a bit, they already planning to go Huka Falls and then adding the airplane McDonald’s to the list after I told them about it).
Snapped some pictures.
Went for a barefoot walk to a viewpoint of the falls on the opposite side of the river–a much longer walk than I anticipated, a wee bit stressful, as I was informally going to meet them at the McDonald’s in town.
I still had one more stop I wanted to make, Aratiatia Rapids, further down river; so I headed over there, made the short walk to the viewpoint, snapped some pictures, and made it to the airplane McDonald’s… juuuust as Pierre and family were leaving. 🙃
I ordered my meal and walked up the stairs into the plane to eat. 😊
Kind of fun. A tad entertaining. 😊 Not air conditioned. 🙃
After eating and snapping some pictures, I noticed that there were recycling receptacles near the park I had parked at, so I was able to get rid of my recycling stuff, as well as my trash. 🎉
From there, I needed to get gas, so I drove around looking for a gas station price. But I headed over to the bungee place where we had gone 3 years ago, I was unable to jump at that time because I had injured myself while on the inner tube behind the boat when Chase was trying extra hard to get me to fly off the inner tube. 🙃
He succeeded. 😆
The result, however, was that I had hit the water so hard that I injured my ribs, if I remember correctly. The bungee people didn’t want me to jump because of how much I was going to be stretched in that region of my body.
Oh well…
Anyway, I snapped some more pictures… memories…
Bittersweet…. melancholic…
It was the same when I stopped by the laundromat where the girls had so graciously done our laundry for us while we were off doing something else that I don’t remember? I think maybe I was feeling crappy (emotionally), and Chase and I were going for a walk and talking.
The girls even folded our laundry for us. 🙏
Anyway, I finally drove away from Taupo. As I leave places, I wonder if I’m ever going to see them again. 😕
I didn’t used to think like that. I don’t think, anyway. I think I was always so focused on what my next adventure was. Nowadays, I spend a lot more time thinking about the past and about how little time there is left.
Life goes by so quickly, and my body being as broken as it is… I have no idea what I’ll be able to do in the future.
From Taupo, I headed to a hot River, a place called and cold, which should probably be called hot and warm, as it’s the confluence of two rivers, one quite hot, and the other one more bath water warm.
The hot side is probably hot-tub hot, so after a little while, if you’re me at least, you need to cool off, so you make your way over to the warm side, where your body can cool down a little bit.
And then it’s just back and forth and back and forth.
For hours. 🙃
At first, there were a lot of people there, but as I stayed longer and longer, most of the people left. I spent a good little while talking to some ladies from Fiji (one of whom I got the distinct impression was interested in me and asked for my number), and then after they all left, I chatted a little bit with a couple of younger guys who had just arrived. They were New Zealanders who were also mui thai fighters–one of them having a championship fight this weekend for the title of New Zealand, I believe (at least in his particular weight class).
Hot ‘N Cold is definitely a place I would go back to, and sand flies weren’t even the tiniest bit of a problem. 🙏
From there, I headed over to Kerosene Creek, another hot river that was more of a creek, but more importantly for me right now, a place to stay the night. 🛏️
What a day. 😊
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 