South Island

Our first stop on South Island of New Zealand was famous Maruia falls. After few runs down the waterfall we tried some rivers around Murchison but everything was dry. We continued down to south along the West coast to Hokitika. This small town is usually full of kayakers because there are the best rivers in New Zealand. But we realized that the rivers are totally dry and there aren’t kayakers in town at all. So we moved more south to Queenstown. Not far from here flows one of the few NZ big water rivers – Kawarau river. It was also quite dry but at least there was some water there. We spent here few days just enjoying the river, we paddled all sections including all big rapids like Citroen, Nevis Bluff and Retrospect. We had not much time left but still lots of things to do. Our next stopovers were Chritchurch destroyed by many earthquakes and the Rangitata river with beautiful lower gorge. Then we decided to try our luck in Hokitika again. This time we met lots of kayakers here and the weather forecast promised raining for next few days. In next days we paddled almost all rivers around Hokitika accessible by car or hiking: Crooked, Kakapotahi, Styx, Arahura and Totara. Just few days left till end of our trip and we were still looking forward to do some more serious run, but all helitrips were too high. Fortunately rain stopped and water levels dropped quite fast so our wish come true and we flew to Perth. Upper part of this river was continuous and really steep so we had lots of fun for whole two days. Than followed long drive to north and even longer fly back home.