By Max Sakarai-Sarll , 23 May 2025
For this trip, me and a couple of others headed up to Mangaweka Campground late May for packrafting (basically kayaking but ur on a raft) organised by Béatrice Desy but run by far more experienced people. After driving up and camping on Friday, we spent Saturday morning learning how to paddle, tie knots and throw rope in case of emergency with mixed results (paddling was easy, but don’t ask me to tie those knots!)
Then the leader (Martin) sent us on a short paddle down to a bridge in Otara. Finally, some time on the water! Anyway, it was a blast actually getting to have fun, even though I personally spent half the trip just letting my raft do what it wanted.
On Sunday, Martin had us drive up to a small settlement called Utiku and spend 3 hours rafting down to the campground with most people. I somehow managed to fall in after nearly hitting a rock outcrop with my head; fortunately the professionals noticed and rescued me before I got swept away.
Finally, before the trip, Beatrice had provided us with these devices to inflate the packrafts via manually pumping air into them. However, we quickly realised that a more efficient way was to use battery-powered devices to pump air into them due to the physical strength required to pump air manually; we should make an effort to acquire these devices in the future should we run more packrafting trips in the future.
The battery-powered device in question