Waking up on New Years Day, after making it to midnight, we...
packed up our tent
I had a first "big bite"
said goodbye to our campsite friends
headed out to explore Whanganui National Park
First big bite you ask ... it's an annual tradition since 2005. I take my first bite of food in each new year seriously. It sets the culinary tone for the year.
Appropriate to family camping and our summer road trip, it started off with some good old fashioned homemade oatmeal at the campsite. It seemed fitting for a Kiwi New Years! Here's a link to every first bite since 2005, for the culinary curious.
Searching for an adventure during this part of the trip, I had come across the Bridge to Nowhere Lodge. The lodge sits on a 1,400 acre piece of land and is the only private land in Whānganui National Park. It's only accessible via the river, either via a jetboat, canoe or kayak.
Jetboat Ride
The jetboat was invented by a Kiwi in the 1950s, designed to speed through the many shallow, fast rivers in the country. The boat is propelled by a pump expelling water, as opposed to a propeller which would catch rocks in the shallow water. We frequently see them charging up the Shotover River in Queenstown. P&S have been eager to partake, but we've held off looking for an unexplored area of NZ to give it a go. This was the perfect spot!
Our jetboat was full of grey haired Kiwi couples. Kiwi's are big international travelers and the extent to which they've ramped up in-country travel has exceeded all economic expectations. With the borders closed, the tourism industry as a whole has done much better than forecasted. Queenstown has still been hit hard, as it became so dependent on international tourists - it traditionally really only sees bumps of Kiwis during the school holiday period.
At 10:00am, off we went. We had a 1 hr 15 mins ride up the river, which included a few brief stops along the way. There were more kayaks and canoes on the water than we expected - there's a popular 5 days canoe/camp trip down the river.
As we move North through NZ, there is more of a tropical feel upon us. Ferns abound and the occasional palms tree was in sight.
360 Spin
Finally, the moment that P&S, in particularly Paige, had been waiting for ... a 360 spin in the jetboat we see so often in Queenstown. Sitting next to Paige, I rolled camera on her to capture the joy! And oh, it was pure.
Bridge to Nowhere
We disembarked the jetboat and set off on a 40 min hike for a visit to the Bridge to Nowhere.
Jonathan, our tour guide, gave a very interesting 30min history of the area and bridge. I'll attempt to summarize in two sentences: Post WWI, a group of ~40 soldiers were given grants to start farming the area, which was extremely difficult terrain. The bridge construction was part of a promise of infrastructure improvements, but was never linked to any meaningful road network.
After the history lesson and lunch, we were back on the jetboat. This time for us, it was a five minute ride to a canoe which was waiting for us. We had a 1.5 hour paddle down river to the lodge where we would be spending the night. The rest of the boat waved and wish us good luck - they were headed back, having just signed up for a day trip.
Canoe Ride
We enjoyed a relatively easy paddle down the river, enjoying the scenery and the occasional rapid, if you could even classify them as such.
The Lodge
After tying up the canoe, we walked up to the lodge where we were greeted by some friendly calves. They weren't the only animals; there were sheep, a gaggle of geese, chickens and some busy bee hives.
We were the only guests who had arrived, so we had the place to ourselves. The lodge has seven rooms, the rest of the lodge had been booked by a party that cancelled last minute so we had the place to ourselves.
During happy hour, a trickle of young adults arrived at the hotel bar, looking for a cold beer. The lodge also has a camping area on their property, where the thirsty group wandered in from. Sarah and I shared a beer on the deck, while the girls dusted off their chess skills and played a few cords on some communal guitars. The girls and I played a game of Monopoly on a NZ themed board.
Learning About Nepal At Dinner
A young man in his late 20s wandered into the lodge with a confused look on his face at one point. Turns out, he had been ahead of his group on the river and overshot their intended camp site for the night. In the park there is no cell coverage, so it was not possible for him to get in touch with his group. The lodge was their destination for the next night, so he booked in and would spend the next day comfortably until his party caught up.
Sarah invited him to join us at dinner, where we learned he had arrived in NZ six years ago from Nepal. We talked about the culture in Nepal, food, his family and much more. He was in trade school currently working toward becoming an electrician and is on course to become a Kiwi citizen next year. A good lesson for the girls, when asking him about Nepal and trekking in the mountains (Mt. Everest), he said that "most Nepalese aren't thinking about trekking, they're just working hard to put food on the table."
After a night of sleep we woke up to a wet morning. After breakfast, we left the lodge at 8:45am and fortunately the rain broke for our ride down the river. It was only us on the jetboat and we really enjoyed the foggy morning on the river. It felt a bit like we were in Southeast Asia, reminding us of Khao Sok National Park in Thailand.
Here's a video of the lodge and our jetboat out the next morning...
Grateful to have found another gem in NZ. They're around every corner!
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