Rafting
One gloomy autumn morning. Me and 13 of my other classmates got the wonderful opportunity to go rafting down the Arnold river with 6 polytech people with us.
Friday came and I woke up and I thought to myself that I needed to get ready because we were leaving at 8:15 and I didn’t want to miss rafting. I hauled myself out of bed and got dressed in my thermals and clothes and started to pack my lunch and fill up my drink bottle fast. I would have been very annoyed at myself if I didn’t get there on time. I quickly packed my bags and almost left when I remembered that it was my last day to see my aunty because later that day she would be leaving to go back to her house in Oamaru. I rushed back inside only to find out that she was in the shower so I waited five minutes until she was changed and gave her a hug and told her that I would miss her and told her where I was going and then rushed out the door.
Soon realized that Ben had been coming too even though he didn’t have to come for 15 more minutes and asked him if he had said goodbye to our aunty. His response was no but I told him to go back and tell her that he was going to school even though he didn’t have to. As I walked up the driveway I looked into our classroom and I couldn’t see anyone but Ms Kemp and Mr S but no kids so I was worried that everyone had already left and that I rushed for no reason. As I walked inside I asked where everyone was and was told that we didn’t have to be here until 8:45, apparently I was the first person there.
As I waited more and more people showed up and I was growing more excited by the minute. At last the time had come for us to depart from school in the vans, As we piled into the vans and drove down to the polytech. We hopped out and walked inside where all the rafts and wetsuits were and were instructed to get in a circle. When everyone was in the circle and no one was double parking we had about 2 minutes to think about something that you like that started with the first letter of your name which was hard for me because I could only think of two things that started with Z and I ended up saying that I liked zebras because I couldn’t think of anything else.
Soon enough we were being handed wetsuits and told to go and get changed but when we got to the girls changing rooms we were a bit surprised to find that it didn’t have a door, instead a hanging tarpaulin was hiding us from the people walking past I got my wetsuit on as fast as I could then walked out and went to grab my bag but some of the people were already bringing them in so I just helped carry some of them. We walked back inside, placed the bags on one of the rafts then put our drink bottles in the dry bag and got our splash jackets on along with our helmets and then the Polytech students asked us if we had put our lunches in the dry bag and we said yes then started to head out to the vans.
On the way there I sat next to Stella who kept on saying that she was really scared but I assured her that we would be fine. As we drove I admired the wonderful river that was flowing beneath us.
As we were driving I was thinking how we were going to start at lake moana when all of a sudden I looked up and we were turning down a road that did not lead to moana but as we drove down the bumpy gravel road I had a feeling that I had been here before when all of a sudden I realised that once me, Kri, Ollie and John had once walked through the track once but we weren’t going there today instead we were going along the river. As we walked down to the grass patch I thought to myself of how nervous but how excited I was! We played bump and chicken or hero for a while while the polytech students unloaded the rafts then we had to get in a line from tallest to shortest but the line wasn’t too accurate but oh well we were split into three groups by going 1,2,3 and so on. I got put in group two which had Me, Stella, Carson, Caleb and Caius in it. We then went up to the vans and we had to all carry our rafts back down to the grass patch. Then we just learnt the basics like get down, hold on, forward paddle and backwards paddle.
When we had finished learning the basics and choosing where on the boat we were sitting we headed down to the river. Caleb sat on the front on the left and I sat behind him with caius behind me, Stella was across from me with Carson infront of her and they were on the right. As we hopped on the boat we got into our seats and waited until Lennox and Johnny were on our boat because they were our leaders then we started to paddle a bit upstream and practised our hold on, get down, forward paddle and back paddle and luckily we passed the test on if we could do all that with confidence then we started to paddle down the river to the first rapid which luckily wasn’t too bad.
“AHHHH!” Stella screamed while we were going down the small rapid but it didn’t bother me too much. It was really fun but then we had to hold on for a second before we sat back up and started to forward paddle.
“That was really fun!” I yelled so Stella could hear me. My heart raced as we paddled and as I replayed the first rapid in my head I thought about how we would be going through that many more times that day. As we paddled I thought how peaceful it was until we started to turn and I saw an even bigger rapid which made me terrified and I definitely screamed at least twice.
“Are we actually going down that!” I yelled just loud enough for my instructors to hear.They replied with yes and I started to get scared that our boat might flip and we might fall in and before I knew it we were already about to go down it and as we paddled just into the first bit I hear my one of our instructors yell get down so I hurried to get down into the boat.
I’m terrified as we go over all the bumps and rocks but I didn’t realize I could be so terrified until we got stuck right on top of a rock as we were getting told instructions to lean and then get down. After a scarry battle and getting soaked we finally got told to get back into our seats just to be greeted by bumping into the side of the river. “Well that was fun!” lenoxx said. I shook my head because at the time I thought that was absolutely horrible, luckily it looked like there would be a bunch of non-rapid waters for a while. I was enjoying myself as we went through a calm bit and I thought of how happy I was to have been invited to go rafting.
As I look up I see another rapid! Oh no, I’m thinking in my head but I was very happy when I realized that it wasn’t as big as the first one. As we got closer I realized that there were two ways to go and so I asked which way to go and Johnny said to go down the one on our right because it was too shallow to go through the left which I was a bit disappointed about but realized how excited i was to go down the right because it still looked fun.
It was all the same for a while, just little bumps and amazing views. After a while of just paddling we were told to go sharp to the right because we would be eating lunch and I got scared that we wouldn’t make it to the spot in time because of the fast flowing rapid but with a lot of effort we did and I was overjoyed because that meant we could eat our lunch! We paddled over to the shore and hopped out, I walked over to where everyone else was and grabbed my lunch out and started to eat. I first ate my muesli bar then I dug into my sandwich which was delicious.
“Anyone want hot chocolate?” said one of the polytech students. Most people went over but I didn’t feel like hot chocolate so I just stayed where I was.
Shortly after Johnny told us to follow him so we did, He told us we could take our jackets and helmets off if we wanted to so I did. Everyone walked up into the bush following him as he pointed out plants and told everyone what they were.As we got to this one plant he said that it was edible and before he could say that it was very spicy at least 5 people had taken a bite and found out for themselves how spicey it was.
As soon as we got back we put our stuff back on and headed back to the boats. I got excited because they said we would be going through some more rapids but apparently they wouldn’t be as big as the first one sadly. After that it was pretty normal just paddling until we got to this one spot where we were told to start paddling to shore. I was confused at first but was informed shortly after that that we would get the opportunity to jump off the bank and I was definitely nervous at first but realized after a couple people had done it that it was fun.
I jumped once but didn’t jump again because I didn’t want to be too cold on the rest of the journey so I walked back up and ust cheered other people on until we had to go back down. As I attempted to walk through the slippery shallow waters back to our boat I thought of how lucky I was to get the opportunity to go rafting.
Eventually I made it there and I hopped back in, grabbed a paddle, sat down and waited for instructions. We sat there for a while before we actually started to go. I was excited for what was ahead but also a bit scared. “I’m so excited!” I said as we started to go, we approached a medium sized rapid and I saw that there was a massive rock in our path which made me a bit scared.
As we approached it we were told to forward paddle which made me think that we were crazy and were about to get flipped, just before we hit it he said to hold on which I gladly did. When we actually hit it it wasn’t too bad, just a bit of a fright. After we hit it we just started to paddle on like normal for ages which was boring but fun because I didn’t get splashed with water or get a fright.
As we were nearing the end Lenoxx told everyone on the boat to get to one side then he tied a rope from the other end and because it was so much heavier on one side than the other one the end started to partially sink. Because I don’t like water that isn’t clear and when a boat is sinking I started to shout
“ AHHHHH THE BOAT IS SINKING, WE ARE GONNA FLIP, WE ARE LITERALLY SINKING!”. If you couldn’t tell I thought Lenoxx was going to flip us from the way the boat was positioned, well I thought that right up until we got to a branch that was hanging off the side of the river. Out of nowhere Lenoxx jumps up and grabs onto the branch but because it was rotten it came crashing down and Lenoxx along with it. Everyone ducked and Lenoxx ended up landing half on the boat and half on me and Caleb but luckily we were both fine. After that he ended up tumbling into the water but happy that he finally got rid of the tree branch.
“AHH!” me and Stella both screamed as he fell into the water, I sat up so fast I probably could have fallen backwards but I didn’t. I looked around frantically thinking that Lenoxx had floated away but he was just next to the boat. Johnny helped him back in and we scrambled back to our seats trying not to fall in the water because that would be a disaster. Once everyone was back in their seats we started back down the river. I asked Lenoxx how much longer until the end and he said about 15 minutes so I said “Ok.” and continued paddling forward.
Eventually we got to the end and started to paddle over to the shore when I got really excited but really sad. When we made it to shore we dragged the raft just enough out of the water so it wouldn’t float away then we went up to the road and took off everything until we were left in just our thermals. We then had to carry the rafts up to where the other car was waiting.
We then went back down to a grass patch and played some games but my favorite was knight in shining armour because I won one of the rounds. After we finished up we started off for the long journey home.
-Zara