Canyoning

That could be a succinct and apt blog entry, but anyway...

For $225 I got the pleasure of a thirty-minute drive in a rickety van along an unsealed road (complete with flocks of suicidal sheep), with three other travellers (two Aussie guys and a French-Canadian girl) and our guide, an English guy orignally from Cornwall; a wet-suit; and the chance to jump down waterfalls, abseil down canyon walls, and slide, jump and dive off cliffs, down stream channels and into deep waterfall-gouged pools.

We had a twenty-minute uphill walk-in to about 2/3 of the way up the Niger stream (it's a small river really), with fantastic views of Mount Aspiring, topped with snow, to our right, and the sound of river rushing by on our left. At the top we donned wet-suits (bouncy and very strange to move in for a while!), gloves, hoods (it's a good look, really), hats, and harnesses, and after a run-through of abseiling techniques and safety stuff, clipped ourselves onto a rope and edged out along the canyon-edge. The first task was to abseil down the rock-face and then star-jump backwards into a deep pool. It was kind of nervy, but great when you got to the almost bottom and jumped out, coming off the end of the abseil rope and landing in the freezing cold water!

Next was a slide/jump/fall down an 11 metre waterfall. From the bend in the stream
you couldn't see the bottom of the falls or the pool, so we had no idea how far down it was. One by one we shuffled into the stream channel, the water rushing away and falling away below us; lay back, arms in, knees together, waiting for the count, and then pushed forward, sliding along the rock on the layer of water... When suddenly the rock-bed dropped away and you were falling, falling, falling (...and possibly screaming, ahem), landing with a splash and a shock, water up you nose and in your ears, in the pool below. It was brilliant! Everyone emerged from the water punching the air and screaming, whooping, demanding to go again. Our guide of course had to do one better by somersaulting from a high rock-shelf into the pool!

The rest of the two and a half hour trip included slipping down natural 'slides' formed by the river - sometimes feet first, and a few times (the best times!), head first!; jumping off cliffs into the water, and swimming in cold waterfall pools, one with a rainbow dancing across the water as it flowed over the rocks. There was also some scrambling, up steep banks, gripping onto roots and branches, to take a second shot at the headfirst slip (a second, and a third). The Canadian girl and I decided to bow out with dignity on the last challenge, a leap off a massive-seeming cliff, which you had to time properly or risk landing on the shelf of rock sticking out below!
...Or at least we thought that was the last challenge! But, no, we had to get back across the canyon somehow - and what better way to make the journey than on slightly shoddy-looking zipline, metres above the water?

We were buzzing by the end of trip - a high which didn't wear off until I arrived back at the backpackers, when it was suddenly all I could do to make a cup of tea and crawl onto the sofa for the evening. An awesome day!

written by  LizIsHere on March 6, 2010 from Wanaka, New Zealand
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
Send a Compliment

comment on this...